Car-safety.org banner...

For some reason (I suspect my #$*&# ISP), the Car-Safety.org banner at the top of the forum pages never loads, and frequently stalls out so that the rest of the page won't load, either. Do you think there's anything you can do to make it less of a problem? Maybe the resolution of the image(s) is too high?

I admit that I have lots of trouble with my ISP and loading images. However, that has gotten much better over the past week, and this forum still stalls out on me. Plus, I'm giving the web address out to people locally, and most of them use the same ISP I do.

If there's nothing you can do about it, I understand. I just thought it was worth a shot.

Good question. The banner is 18kb, so it's not too big. While I have no ability to do anything about the ezboard forum itself, the banner is hosted at my ISP so I can at least call them and see if they can help. In that regard, I'd also like to know if the webpages at car-safety.org load OK or not. The FAQ, LATCH page and buying guides are all hosted at the same place as the banner logo.

Just out of curiousity, see if either of the following load quicker, if at all:

www.car-safety.org/forums.jpg

user.mc.net/~carseat/forums.jpg

Ezboards does have it's ups and downs for speed. Unfortunately, we're at their mercy since it is a free service. Pretty much all the providers for the websites are free or low cost, since there is no revenue to pay for a premium provider. If it gets too bad, please let me know and I will see if there are any alternatives.

...pretty sure they were loading from my cache, as the one at the top of my forums page loads that far then stops as well. The FAQ & Buying Guide pages load fine *except* for the logo, but at least the logo doesn't stall them out.

Now that I think about it, the EZBoard forums can be quirky, and sometimes another board I visit doesn't load, and she doesn't have a logo at the top. This just seems a lot more frequent than that. Thanks for looking into it for me.

I thought it might be due to the free provider that redirects car-seat.org to ezboards, but that now doesn't seem to be the case. Since the logo and car-safety webpages are on the same site, and since the logo is much smaller in size than something like the FAQ, I'm at a loss. If I get time, I will try to redraw the logo and see if that helps somehow. Have you tried to manually reload just the picture using the option in right click? Do you have the latest version of Netscape/Explorer? I'm not a webpage or net guru, but if it's as simple as redrawing the logo, I can handle that:-) Or, if you are artistic and overflowing with time and creativity, I wouldn't mind a change either...

>Have you tried to manually reload just the picture using
>the option in right click?

Yes. No good.

o you have the latest version of Netscape/Explorer?

Yes, latest version of Netscape 4.7. Older version of Explorer has similar problem.

The more I think about it, the more I think that making the image smaller won't work. Sometimes the little tiny faces in front of posts won't show, either. It's just my stupid ISP. {grrrr} Smaller images are more likely to load completely in the short time that it tries to load them, but the problem is on my end, not yours.

The icons on ezboards are definitely hosted somewhere other than where the banner and pages are hosted. I wonder if the ISP has some default timeout or something. Usually an issue that the ISP admin would have to answer, since the front line techs usually can't handle that sort of thing.

Sorry I couldn't help.

They "wouldn't understand me". It's absolutely amazing that *everyone* here understands English... EXCEPT telephone customer service reps.

I don't know what the problem is, but it's very frustrating as right now I'm researching medieval artwork. I have to reload a page dozens of times before the whole thing will load, through hundreds of images!

Thanks again for your willingness to try!

OK, it sounds like it is definitely your ISP or your computer. Since the ISP may be impossible to troubleshoot, here are some things to try if you haven't already:
1)Clear your browser's cache, history and cookies. Some of these options are in the browser's options, but you may have to find and delete the cookies from windows explorer.
2)Make sure nothing else is running when you are surfing. Anything in the background like anti-virus or other utilites can be a problem. If you hit ctrl-alt-del you will see a list of everything. Feel free to post the list here and I may be able to help. The only necessary things are "Explorer", "Systray" and "Rnaapp" (only when you are using dial-in). Most other stuff can be permanently or temporarily disabled.
3)Make sure you have the latest drivers, especially for your modem and video.
4)In IE, try going to tools->internet options->connections tab->LAN settings button->uncheck the "Use Proxy Server" box. If this makes things worse, just re-check it again. Netscape may have a similar setting somewhere.