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McAfee Retired
McAfee Retired
Message 61 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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Hello,

  SA team is investigating and will get in touch with users to get additional info.

user_153650
Former Member
Message 62 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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Hayton,

I did as you suggested; here are the replies I received:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Marian>
C:\Documents and Settings\Marian>ping siteadvisor.com

Pinging siteadvisor.com [208.69.152.108] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 208.69.152.108: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=241
Reply from 208.69.152.108: bytes=32 time=41ms TTL=241
Reply from 208.69.152.108: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=241
Reply from 208.69.152.108: bytes=32 time=47ms TTL=241

Ping statistics for 208.69.152.108:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 40ms, Maximum = 47ms, Average = 42ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Marian>

What's next?

user_153650
Former Member
Message 63 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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Just an FYI . . . I can still get the Site Reports, and the screensaver.com site shows as safe, but screensavers.com is not, as you mentioned above.  The button remains gray though, no matter what.. 

Thank you again for tryng to help,

'LizBeth

user_153650
Former Member
Message 64 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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P.S.  Please advise.  Thank you,

Hayton
Reliable Contributor
Reliable Contributor
Message 65 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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Hi 'Lizbeth. I saw the ping results : your PC is talking to the server, no problems. It's just SiteAdvisor that's having problems. I strongly suspect that there's some kind of hang-up with SSL, which is why I wondered if un-selecting that 'Use SSL' option in the SiteAdvisor drop-down menu would remove the obstacle. What that's all about is that SiteAdvisor wants to prevent false information being inserted into any communication with the user, so it's all supposed to be ultra-secure. Trouble is that secure comms are more complex to set up, and I'm convinced there's a glitch in the SiteAdvisor comms setup. Not for everyone though, which is odd. And it seems to be to do with the process that kicks in at system startup, since we know that re-enabling a disabled IE add-on overrides whatever setting has been wrongly initialised.

That's about as far as I can take it. Someone needs to look at the code and figure out what it's doing, and then try to figure out why some PC's work and others don't.

To re-iterate : all that's wrong is that either the server isn't sending, or the SiteAdvisor program running on your PC isn't receiving, the current rating for a site, so the program can't turn the button Green or any other colour. The button just sits there in its don't-know state. Maybe I can get one of the network tools to throw some light on this.

user_153650
Former Member
Message 66 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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Thank you Hayton.

What I gather from your message is that my settings are ok, and that it's Site Advisor that's having the problem?

Should I re-anable my "Use SSL" Site Advisor option?  Or leave it as is?

Is there anything I can do to help speed up the resolution to this problem?

And yes, please see if someone can help figure this out, especially since I'm not the only 1 experiencing this problem.  (I thought several others were already working on this???)

Message was edited by: 'LizBeth on 3/8/13 3:36:23 AM EST
Hayton
Reliable Contributor
Reliable Contributor
Message 67 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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@'Lizbeth,

In the absence of an explanation of the reason for this, we're all experimenting to see what works. If leaving that 'Use SSL' box un-checked means that your SiteAdvisor button goes green when it should, then yes, leave it un-checked. Your PC then talks to the server (and v-v) over a normal connection. Using SSL tells SiteAdvisor to make the connection secure, that's all, so no-one can tamper with the site ratings in transit. Which is .... possible, even if unlikely.

I can't say there aren't any settings in Windows, McAfee firewall, SiteAdvisor, network connections, etcetera etcetera which doing this. It's very odd that it only shows up on some PCs and not others. Someone who knows needs to draw up a list of things to check.

I don't think there's much you (or I) can do to speed up the fix for this unless one of us accidentally finds the solution. The SiteAdvisor people are the ones we need to analyse the possible causes and make a few well-informed suggestions. As far as I know they're still looking at the problem and are unlikely to venture an opinion until they're reasonably sure they know what to do (I mean, they're pros, they need to look as though they know what they're doing).

jmckee
Contributor III
Message 68 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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The past 2 days I have noted one oddity. In the afternoon (EST) the SA button stays gray. A few hours later in the evening , affter the daily VS update , the button stays green. After midnight , it is gray again. The system is shut down after each session. The "Use SSL" option in SA is set to "yes".

Hayton
Reliable Contributor
Reliable Contributor
Message 69 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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@jmckee, try setting that option to 'No' and see if it makes a difference.

There's a clue there for the techs, but I don't know quite what it means, when you say the SiteAdvisor button shows Green after a DAT update. Something gets reset, or you're connecting to a server that knows how to talk to your PC. Possibly the different behaviour then is caused by connections to servers that are running different versions of the server software? If so then it's out of our hands. But still, there has to be some way to set up a connection between PC and server that works consistently.

jmckee
Contributor III
Message 70 of 134

Re: Site Advisor browser button is always gray?

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Hayton wrote:

@jmckee, try setting that option to 'No' and see if it makes a difference.

I have tried it both ways - no difference either way.

If I remember , I will see if the button goes green without the DAT update.

UPDATE: When I came on tonight , I did not manually request the update as I normally do. Instead , I went right into accessing sites in both IE and FF. The button remained gray the whole time. After manually getting the update , the button went green.

The real need with SA - at least for me - is to be able to know in advance if a site is OK or not when using a search engine.


Message was edited by: jmckee on 3/9/13 7:48:35 PM EST
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