<kellmano> I re-read your post, you did not say if you installed it, just that you downloaded it. So...

1. Can you give us the name of the program that you downloaded, does it say JRE or SDK?

It is usually named something like jre-8u40-windows-x64 or -windows-i586

Where jre is Java Runtime Environment, followed by Java version (8) which update sub-version (40) the OS (windows) and whether it's designed for 64- or 32- bit system/browser.

2. Now, to complicate things, even if your system is 64- but running a 32-bit browser, install the 32-bit JRE. Which is named i586, don't use the x64.

Conversely, you can download and install the 64-bit version browser (IE, FireFox, Chrome, whatever...), and that will work with the 64-bit JRE.

Feel free to post any question or steps you have done on my forum, be more than happy to answer them for you.

1. Go to Start Button -> Control Panel -> Java

2. Click on the tab on top that says "java" and then click on the "View"

3. Under the 'User' tab, can you give us the information listed there?

4. You have a 'My Computer' or 'Computer' icon on your desktop? Right click on that icon and select 'Properties'.

Good evening.

I'm trying to edit a bio, but my last change keeps directing to a OUR SERVER IS OVERLOADED notice, even though I'm still able to navigate to other cg.com pages- such as this one here, for example!

Hmmm.

My edit finally went through, but this time ending up with a <Invalid link to /perl/chessplayer> notice.

And now by closing my browser and reopening to the bio page, I was able to complete the edit.

Good morning.

Please forgive my repeating something I've asked about several times before, but whenever Cg.com seems to have some slowing of service, if I use my Korean ISP my browser hangs indefinitely- but if I use a United States proxy address, it hangs for a moment or two and then goes through.

Good afternoon.

<OUR SERVER IS OVERLOADED> Oh dear, we had that happen a few days ago briefly when one of the live games started but that can easily be attributed to high traffic levels. It means what it says: the server is having difficulty keeping up with all the requests so it tells some people that they have to chill out for a minute. I imagine you felt much like that bored woman on the right of the graphic, waiting for the ENIAC to come back online. (http://www.chessgames.com/chessimag...)

<My edit finally went through, but this time ending up with a <Invalid link to /perl/chessplayer> notice.> That's interesting. Maybe the script processed your change but the one query which gets the guy's name timed out. I've never seen that happen but if you had a long delay between when you pressed "update" and when the broken link came back, that could explain it.

I looked in the editor logs and I see you editing his page at the time you say, but nothing else.

The fact that you got the overload message on the player page and not on this one is counterintuitive but it makes sense perfect sense to me. There is a function called loadcheck() which is installed on some of the most resource intensive pages, but not all pages. To make matters more complicated, some pages allow for bigger loads than others. The homepage only gives the message if the server is in a state of meltdown, a game page is less tolerant, and user profiles are less tolerant still.

One of the scripts which does a loadcheck() is "playeredit", the special script for editing players. It has a very low threshold. That's our way of saying "The server's too busy to support everybody, so now's not a great time to be editing players."

The fact that you could use most pages but not the playeredit script means that the server was overloaded but not in "meltdown".

Now of course the real question is: why was it overloaded? I see in the logs that the crisis happened between 14/Nov/2014:19:35 and 14/Nov/2014:20:05 EST, about 25 minutes just like you said.

A few days ago some hacker was trying to guess the root password by sending about 100 guesses a second. It's a crude attack that will never grant him access, but it sure is a pain when he does it while 1500 other people are trying to use the site. Of course we blocked his IP. When I read your post I feared he was back under a new IP, but I don't see any evidence of that.

I guess we have to take it at face value: the server was overloaded for 30 minutes. Perhaps more research will reveal something, but during the WCC it's not impossible to imagine us being mentioned on Indian television or something like that. Thanks for reporting this.

This can't be a coincidence, since it's been a chronic intermittent phenomenon for two years now. I have been using the cg.com "straight number" address ever since you suggested that fix, but it no longer seems to make any difference.>

OK, this again. I confess, at first I thought "it's probably some lame Korean ISP" but the fact is that Korea is an extremely good nation for internet connectivity; even better than the USA, I have heard. So I really don't have a good explanation for why you would be having such troubles.

Connecting by IP address (http://199.237.62.163/) is only useful if your ISP has some DNS (name-lookup) problem, so it certainly wouldn't have helped tonight when we were actually overloaded. (It's also useful as a trick to use CG at work, if your firewall blocks all sites with "games" in the domain name... but you didn't hear that from me ;-)

One way to debug your connection to a website is to use your machine's traceroute command. This shows exactly which servers connected you to the destination. To do this in Windows you have to go to your MS-DOS prompt (if you don't know how to do that read this http://www.computerhope.com/issues/...) and then type in this:

TRACERT CHESSGAMES.COM

or alternately

TRACERT 199.237.62.163

Those two commands should provide virtually the same output. The number of milliseconds between hops will change, but the hops themselves should be either the same or almost the same. (If for some reason they look very different, it could be a problem with your local DNS, but let's cross that bridge when we come to it.)

It's not good, but perfectly normal, to see a few lines with three asterisks <* * *>. That means that some host somewhere between you and us did not respond in time so wasn't employed. However if you see many such lines that could be an indication of some kind of problem. In the worst case the command never finishes, and gives you an endless list of <* * *>, meaning there is a big problem either on your end or ours.

Since you have a US proxy you could conduct the traceroute from Korea and then again from your proxy. Those two will look very different.

I am not qualified to interpret traceroute output but if you copy or screen-capture it and email it to me, I will give it to our network admin for an opinion.

<Cg.com>

<alexmagnus>

The order is alphabetical/numerical, which you probably already know.

This is a well known problem that we're going fix, but meanwhile some users are inconvenienced. There is a very easy workaround, so let me quote my response here:

♔ ♔ ♔ ♔ ♔ ♔ ♔

Hi ******:

I believe I know exactly what you are experiencing, and if I explain the situation I think it will help.

The viewer we use on mobile phones is called pgn4web and has some features built into it. One feature is called "hot squares" which means that if you click on certain squares, features engage. For example if you click on the e7 square the board will turn upside down. If you click on e8 it will bring up a small chess engine to evaluate the position. If you click on b8 you get the FEN code for the position you are viewing. And so forth.

The problem is this: that when you try to scroll on your phone, you inevitably touch one of those "hot squares" and that takes priority over the scrolling feature of your phone.

The workaround is simply to scroll by touching the very top of the page, outside the squares. I usually aim for the names of the players, or the orange bar on top. Then I can flick it down and arrange it perfectly on the phone. It actually takes a little bit of practice to get good at this, and there is a danger of accidentally clicking on a link, but once you know what you are trying to do it's pretty easy to accomplish.

There was no user tab on the java, but when I clicked the information button it said - Java standard edition version 8 update 25

My computer says it is - Windows 7 home premium.

AVG does allow for disabling all of its web browsing protection (see http://support.avg.com/SupportArtic...) but that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I certainly wouldn't want you to disable it in order to use Chessgames only to get malware from another site.

Offhand, an experiment could be to disable it temporarily, see if it fixes the problem, and whatever happens turn it back on immediately afterward. At least then you'd know if AVG is the problem.

Can we please have a forum for the <2014 UKRAINIAN CHAMPIONSHIP>? Thanks.

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TWIC DOSSIER -> http://theweekinchess.com/chessnews...