My husband can not log in

a reply to: calstorm

This reminds me of the other day. I could not even see an ats page. I could go to any other site anywhere on the internet, but my browser would not open an ATS page at all at all.

My husband, who uses the exact same computer just a different side of the computer, was not having the same problem. (it was at this point I began wondering if I got banned or something... lol)

Well, my husband figured it was a virus of some kind... and whatever he did fixed it.

I'll make sure he knows about this thread and when he wakes up he can tell you what he did to fix it...

a reply to: semperfortis

OK, I just tried all three browsers again.
No luck.
Again Thanks for letting the Tech Guy / Gal Know.

I don't know if this will have any bearing on it or not, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

A couple of days ago, OpinionatedB could not get to ATS on her account on this computer, but I could on my computer account on the same machine. ATS logged me out once on it's own, and I finally got logged back in after getting tossed to seemingly random ATS upper level pages the first couple of attempts, but I COULD at least get to the login page, which she could not do. For some reason, something prevented her computer account from accessing ATS AT ALL, and mine was being problematic.

Now, to be fair, I regularly go to places on the internet that ought to have a warning label saying "here there be dragons", so over time I've learned how to ferret out unwanted intrusions.

I ran Malwarebytes Anti-Malware first, which found a plethora of problems, One was something I picked up venturing into the dark recesses of the internet, and one was something OB picked up just thrashing around "harmless" sites per normal. The one she had was something called "SearchProtect", and had insinuated itself pretty deeply into the computer, installing itself and mucking around with registry keys when no one was looking - it had 170 various instances scattered around the hard drive. MBAM got rid of that, as well as 256-odd tracking cookies. After a reboot, it seemed fine, but I ran SuperAntiSpyware just in case, which picked up a couple of odd stragglers, zapped them, and then rebooted again, and lo and behold, OB could once again access ATS, and I had no more login problems.

Both of those programs have free versions (which start out as the full version for a period of time so you can test drive it) which can be downloaded. I highly recommend giving those a try first, upgrading the definitions database for them right after installation and before running the scans. It might take an hour or two to ferret out the problems, but that beats days of frustration!

Ccleaner is a fine program - I use it too - but it's not designed to dig out entrenched viral infections, it's only to clear drive space by getting rid of temp files, MRUDS, browser history and cookies and the like. By all means run it, but run the other two as well. Anything that is SUPPOSED to be there for ATS to function properly will be replaced on the drive when you can access ATS, and the rest will no longer make nuisances of themselves.

You may be surprised at what you find when you run the malware killers, but don't panic - just tell the program to zap them and reboot - the reboot is imperative, because some of that junk will hide in memory and re-install itself first chance it gets. Reboot after each scan run, of each program.

neno

PS - if you've installed any new programs lately, sometimes unwanted stuff will piggyback in on the installation. Those annoying "tool bars" are the worst for that, and some of the more entertaining ones will install themselves to EACH browser found on your system. I had no end of trouble out of them installing themselves and hijacking my browser until I started paying more attention to the installs. Some STILL silently install themselves - "OpenCandy" is the one that installed itself silently most recently when I installed an otherwise perfectly useful encryption program (AxCrypt). Free programs ain't always free - someone, somewhere, is paying for the development, and they will often insist on their "product" being included in the installation, sometimes without any warning at all.

a reply to: nenothtu

That might very well be the problem. While we both run Malwarebytes on a regular basis, he has been getting something called Super Shopper popping up on ever page and an unwanted tool bar that comes with it. I actually forgot he mentioned it a few days back, and I was going to work on the problem for him.

a reply to: calstorm

Download the SuperAntiSpyware and run it as well, and when you scan, tell BOTH of the programs to delete it if they find it, then reboot immediately after so they can get the extra bits that they couldn't get before because those were in use by the system and locked.

As I recall, "Super Shopper" was one of those toolbars that stealth installed and hijacked my browser some time back. I think I had to delete it twice, so as to get all of the straggling bits, and then go into the browser settings and manfully retake my search engine by force. There are places on the internet that will tell you how to get rid of it and retake your browser, step by step. A good place to start would be googling "super shopper virus", because it IS malware, whatever they tell you - anything that hijacks YOUR stuff isn't friendly. "Super Shopper" is actually "spyware".

I have been having many problems too. I was using maxthon browser and couldn't basically do anything all of a sudden. I tried to re-register (as RoScoLaz2) using firefox but no luck. so, i'm forced to use IE for the moment as it at least allows me to log in (having re-registered as, imaginatively, RoScoLaz3).

a reply to: nenothtu

That did it, he is now logged in, ty.

originally posted by: calstorm
When he puts in his username and password and hits the button (note: this is automatically done by the browser but we have tried manually as well), it takes him to recent posts and he is still logged out. Any ideas? Is this a glitch that is currently happening? I am afraid to log out if it is a problem, but I am curious to see what happens if I do.

I encountered a very similar situation myself this morning... after 2 tries I figured out that it must be on my end
~I found that I had several Up-Dates that were delivered in my sleep time... it seems that ATS will log you out when you've got that situation confusing you browser/cookies or whatever...


so I up-dated and restarted my PC...
I immediately got on with no problem


doing that cleaning & malware purging routine is a good, recommended thing to get into a habit of doing regularly as another poster explained...
but I do not think the cause was the presence of virus or malware, because like I said, all I needed to do was install my updates and restart to get logged in on ATS (after an 'involuntary' log out by the ATS server)

...the account access data must get really mashed up and ATS kicks you off
~sorry... I don't speak computer geek jargon ~

a reply to: calstorm

You're welcome - glad it helped.

a reply to: St Udio

I didn't know that, but it sure explains why I got unexpectedly auto-logged out. I didn't know what was going on, and darn near panicked. As it so happens, I had just done a mass update of windows, since I've recently re-installed it and had to get back up to speed.

Once upon a time I used to break Windows once a month, every month. I would break it so bad that a re-install was required. That got annoying until I hit upon a system. Whenever I get a new computer (as I recently have), the first thing I do is wipe the drive and repartition it, making one partition for Windows, and windows only, one for Linux, for a dual-boot system in case something goes wrong with the primary OS (and for other purposes - some things Windows just won't do), and partition what's left for data and programs. That way, I can reinstall Windows relatively painlessly, with minimal loss of data.

I recently acquired a new (to me - it was actually used) laptop, and gave it the treatment - zapped windows, zapped all of the partitions (including that useless "restore" partition... it won't "restore" to anything but the factory partition configuration anyhow, which I have to destroy) then installed Windows and then Linux. It was the updates on that one that apparently auto-logged me out of ATS, and I never made that connection in my mind - thanks for the heads-up!