Yahoo messenger keeps re-signing me in

[boingo]

My friend and I keep having the same problem with Yahoo Messenger:

I've got it set to automatically sign in upon starting it up, but then it keeps dropping out and signing me back in.
Sometimes, like now, it signs me in, then boots me off, and starts the cycle again. It's doing that continuously now, so I don't even get to my friends list.

I've got it set to "Firewall With No Proxies" because of my firewall.
Does anyone know what the problem is and how to solve it?
Thanks

Windows Messenger is a bit more stable, but it locks up or crashes after a while.

[boingo]

No-one's ever going to answer this one, are they?

[dreamcatcher]

I had the same problem with msn, it was so annoying. Eventually i reinstaled windows xp from scratch, and that sorted the problem, but maybe a bit too far to go, but they do advise that windows should be reinstalled ever

[boingo]

Thanks dreamcatcher.
Unfortunately I don't think that will help in my case as MSN has done it from the begining and that was only a couple of months after installing XP for the first time on a brand new machine.
I've found the latest version of MSN seems to do it less often. I'm wondering if it's got anything to do with having it set to automatically sign in when I first start it. I'll try switching that off.

[dreamcatcher]

Yeh, if i want to switch something off, i usually go to run, then type in msconfig, then go to startup, and tick all the boxes of programms i dont want to startup automatically, it saves on ram, but unfortunately msn doesnt seem to be able to be disabled in this way, think its cos its tied in with xp, not sure how yahoo would work.

[cosmicB]

I'm having that same problem with my Yahoo email accunts... I suspect Yahoo has just made some state of the art advancements to their system, and it's still got a few wrinkles to iron out...

Check out Fastmail...

[boingo]

I'm having that same problem with my Yahoo email accunts... I suspect Yahoo has just made some state of the art advancements to their system, and it's still got a few wrinkles to iron out...

Check out Fastmail...

The only problem is they've had the same problems for the last three versions of Yahoo Messenger

[cosmicB]

I solved my problem of the browser not working with Yahoo...

I downloaded Seamonkey 1.1...
Saved my bookmarks in a word file...
Uninstalled Seamonkey...
Did a search and destroy in Find and regedit, for everything: mozilla, seamonkey, firefox, and netscape...
And installed Seamonkey 1.1... Now everything is working OK again...

Maybe this trick will work with any browser that's causing troubles...
It has something to do with old configurations saved on the hard drive... You need to flush out the crap...

[boingo]

Thanks Cosmic B
I hope that works. I do find it a bit odd that Yahoo has done it from day one though. Especially considering I only installed it a month after building my new computer-Literally; Hardware, brand new copy of Windows XP all new versions of everything. The only things that have any problems are Yahoo Messenger, and Windows Messenger. The latter is more stable & doesn't keep refreshing through the log-in screen, but I find it can freeze up if I don't occasionally manually start a new conversation occasionally.
Ultimately, I find neither message programs particularly like too much else fighting for net access, even though I'm on broadband.

[chanster]

If you have yahoo set to run on startup then that's your problem. It will just keep starting up every time you close it.

[cosmicB]

Good point...

To solve that mess, I run regedit to search and destroy every yahoo registry entry.. and I don't use the tool bar...

[boingo]

If you have yahoo set to run on startup then that's your problem. It will just keep starting up every time you close it.

Thanks, but I don't think that will work as I don't have it set to start at all. I have to manually tell it when to run and I've tried both manual and automatic signing in. If I have it set to automatically sign me in upon starting it, then at least it will sign me back in, but if I have it set to manual sign-in, then it still boots me just as often, but I have to manually sign in again.
I've updated to the latest version, which seems a bit more stable, but it does have it's days when it won't sign in at all.

[boingo]

I think I've worked out why chat programs sometimes keep signing out and signing back in.
If they think we've gone off-line, then they disconnect.
It's like having bubbles in a hose pipe of water. Chat programs are constantly checking to see if the internet is there, if it doesn't get a yes response from the modem, then it disconnects, whereas a browser is so fussy and will keep trying for longer.

I discovered this last week when my internet was slow and sometime pages loaded up quickly, other times slowly, or not at all in the end. It was consistent with what the indicator lights on the modem were telling me.

[monosodium]

Sorry - I didn't see this one or I'd have addressed it earlier. Boingo, you're right, CosmicB once again you're "wheat farming" as you called it.

It basically comes down to network congestion amongst other things. Chat applications open up a line of communication to the server and keep it open, like a virtual phone call if you will, staying connected for as long as you ask. A web connection will open up one or more (usually more) connections to the server, gets the data and closes the connection, if it requires more data it will make a fresh connection.

If you wanted to you could see this happening using the netstat command in the command-line.

When the network gets busy then these "persistent" links are no longer maintained (they're dropped to allow the servers to re-balance the traffic) and yahoo, messenger etc have to sign in again to announce themselves to the server. MSN / Live is often better behaved than Yahoo, purely because of the bigger bandwidth available to Microsoft / Akamai. (not sure if yahoo uses akamai's edge caching or not).

Web is also another beast, because many (especially cheaper) providers implement "transparent proxies" meaning that while you think you're machine is talking to the real server belonging to the site you use, it's actually not, it's talking to a server at your service provider.

Not a lot you can do with switching providers, boingo.

[boingo]

Gee. Thanks a lot for all that.
I wonder if one of those "Connection Keep Alive" programs would help. I'm assuming they'd make it worse though by pinching all the band width.