Strange and annoying behavior

[hsr]

I use Google Chrome for my browser and I am seeing some very strange and annoying behavior by this site. Normally when I go to any page on the left of the tab for the page there is a spinner that runs while the page loads and then turns to the web site emblem once the page loads. For the last week or 2 when I go here that spinner continues after the page loads for ~20 seconds and then stops. During those 20 seconds no pictures appear  nor will the sort pull down work. The only thing it seems to be waiting for is for the Britmodeller.com banner to appear on the top of the page. This happens on every page so each time to go to a forum or thread I have a 20 second delay before I can see pictures or do anything. This does not happen on any other web site.

 

Where have I failed?

 

Thanks

Howard

 

[bentwaters81tfw]

Change to Firefox.

[hsr]

I am seeing the same behavior with both Firefox and Opera

[cmatthewbacon]

Restart your router? If it’s happening in different browsers, but just to you, then chances are it’s something at your end or your service providers, not a more general chrome issue. Sounds like there might be a corrupted file somewhere. Is the clock on your computer right? If it’s not, it could be causing issues with the “time to live” of a page element. I don’t know if Chrome has such a thing, but Firefox has a set of developer tools which will show you any errors in the page as it loads, so you might be able to identify the problem component. Again, in Firefox you can clear all the web site data and cache for BM and see if that fixes it on Firefox anyway. 
 

best,

M.

[Mike]

I'm looking on the bright side - at least the strange and annoying behaviour wasn't another member

 

You've had some good advice already, although Frank's "Change to Firefox" was a bit of a throw out the baby with the bathwater solution.

 

There's a lot of info packed into the top FAQ in that section, which you can find here:

 

 

Clearing caches, updating apps/OSes and restarting devices are still some of the best solutions to try, particularly when it's a "you problem", and isn't affecting others.  Also, think back to whether anything changed in your set-up around about the same time.  Mr Smug ( @bentwaters81tfw), or Frank as we know him once had an issue that affected him, and swore blind it wasn't his machine.... until we asked him to switch off his security add-ins, and sho'nuff, it started working again.  Two add-ins were squabbling over resources, and doing the opposite of what they were intended to.  He did admit it though, so we'll let him off

[cmatthewbacon]

Ah, yes… have you got some kind of system level antivirus thingy that vets incoming HTML that might be barfing on the same file independent of which browser is requesting it? If you have, can you “whitelist” BM in its settings? 
best,

M.

[dnl42]

I use Google Chrome too but do not see such behavior.

 

@cmatthewbacon asked a good question.

[hsr]

I cleared the browser cash and history, Turned off my extensions, rebooted the computer and it still happens. I am direct connected to an ethernet cable and am not using wifi. I did install the latest Windows 11 updates around the same time so I might have to wait for a Microsoft patch to come along. sigh.

[hsr]

I use Malwarebytes but I am not using their browser extension.

[PattheCat]

Hi Howard @hsr.

 

I use Windows 11, Chrome and Malwarebytes too. Had a similar problem but on Aeroscale, not BM.

I couldn't find the cause.

I can only propose you my way to try to keep my PC "healthy".

 

What I regularly do or when odd things begin to often pop up:

- clean ALL caches, temp files,etc + registry with CCleaner (you'll have all your memorized passwords wiped so new login required to each site you connect to, "recent" used files in Explorer also etc). Never had data loss, though.

- check for software updates with Ucheck (only select the official updates of apps, up in the list showing after analyze)

 

If an uninstall of an application is needed, I do it with Revo Uninstaller. It gives you the choice to do a more or less thorough uninstall. There often are leftovers after Windows uninstalls a program, it can lead to "instabilities".

 

ALWAYS SAY YES TO A SAVE OF YOUR WINDOWS REGISTRY BEFORE LAUNCHING A PROCESS WITH ANY OF THESE PROGRAMS.

 

I hope it helps.

 

Pat

 

 

[alt-92]

Since you're in the US and I know of some ISP's that do 'weird' stuff such as traffic injection - have you tried tethering your cell phone to see if mobile network has the same behaviour?

[Navy Bird]

I reported this same problem several weeks ago, but then the issue mysteriously went away. And now it's back. I've tried all the suggestions offered and nothing seems to make any difference. My son is a software engineer who used to work at Ft. Meade (think of a three letter acronym) and my son-in-law is IT Manager for the local BC/BS healthcare organisation and neither of them see anything unusual about my router and PC. Whatever is causing this intermittent issue doesn't look to be on my end.

 

The really weird part is that it's only happening with BM. I have other forums I frequent, plus my normal round of modeling sites I visit each day, and they all seem to work fine. I've learned to live with it, but I sure would like to see it mysteriously go away again.   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[hsr]

11 hours ago, PattheCat said:

clean ALL caches, temp files,etc + registry with CCleaner

Funny, I had just deleted CClean from my system because I had heard it can do some bad things to the registry. I reinstalled and ran it to no effect.

 

14 minutes ago, Navy Bird said:

I reported this same problem several weeks ago, but then the issue mysteriously went away. And now it's back. I've tried all the suggestions offered and nothing seems to make any difference.

Good to know I am not crazy.

15 minutes ago, Navy Bird said:

My son is a software engineer who used to work at Ft. Meade

When I was a software engineer at HP we did some systems and software for what we referred to as "the fort". He may have used some of my stuff.

 

16 minutes ago, Navy Bird said:

The really weird part is that it's only happening with BM.

I also have it happening at https://www.specialhobby.net/, but nowhere else, including another forum that seems to be using the same software as BM

 

Thanks

Howard

 

[chauncy]

Howard,
Same thing here in New York, USA. It’s happening on my Safari, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome browsers. Laptop and iPad are both affected. All up to date as far as updates and such. I’ve thought that it’s a bandwidth issue as the text loads fine but the images don’t, it takes about 20 seconds and then they basically all load. 
If you watch you can see the little web site loading circle. I have blazing 300 Gb internet and nothing else is bothered. If I click on a hyperlink in a britmadeller page and it goes right there and loads the page. So who knows. 
Interestingly my IPhone seems not bothered. 

[hsr]

 

I'm in the Philadelphia, USA area. Curious that you have the same 20 second delay. It is consistent. @Mike we can't all have the same bug, or ISP problem.

[hsr]

32 minutes ago, chauncy said:

Same thing here in New York, USA. It’s happening on my Safari, Internet Explorer, and Google Chrome browsers.

 

3 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

I reported this same problem several weeks ago, but then the issue mysteriously went away. And now it's back.

@Navy Bird and @chauncy what ISP do you have? I have Verizon FIOS.

[chauncy]

It’s been happening for weeks too. Since no one had a suggestion on why it was happening when it started a few weeks ago I just thought it was just a bandwidth issue coming from the britmodeller servers. 
I figured I’d have to live with it as I’m totally hooked on britmodellers. 

[chauncy]

I have Altice/Optimum as an ISP. My IPhone uses T-Mobile for cell service. 

[hsr]

1 minute ago, chauncy said:

I have Altice/Optimum as an ISP

So it is probably not an ISP issue

[chauncy]

Honestly hsr I think it’s some sort of latency issue with britmodeller than anything with us. Too many different variables to say it’s this or that on our part because I’m finding it on most ways I access it. Occam’s Razor, you know. 

The only thing that I wonder is maybe some sort of VPN. Do you use a VPN? I have one installed but I don’t use it all the time when I’m just surfing the internet at home. 
 

[treker_ed]

I'm looking through most of these comments and the only commonality is that you all seem to be in the US that are having problems. As has been said, it seems spread across many areas, and many ISPs BUT.... The BM server, as far as I am aware, is US based, so does not seem to be a latency issue, 

 

I'm UK based, use MS Edge (which is chrome based) and do not see any of the delays in pages loading that is being reported, either on my desktop PC, my laptop, or mobile (cell) phone, on which I use the mobile version of Edge. The other thing that stands out from the comments is the usage of Malwarebytes, that a couple of you seem to be using. How many others are using it? Whilst I agree that a good anti-virus package is essential, I have found that a lot of commercial packages like those can be real resource hogs on a PC. I use Windows Security and have never had any problems with viruses or other types of internet nasties. I'm not saying it's perfect, none of them are, but it suits my purposes and isn't a total system hog.

 

All we can do is continue diagnosing the problem and see what we can come up with. However, it could be one of those issues that won't be solved easily or simply, and will take time and effort.

[chauncy]

So I checked to see what my vpn was doing and saw that I had to re-sign in. As I said earlier I use a VPN but only when traveling so I don’t pay it to much mind unless I need to use it for banking or sensitive stuff. It’s now active but it recognizes my Wi-Fi as a safe network and doesn’t actively protect. So after sighing in to my VPN it seems to load ok now. Weird. 
I’m using NordVPN so I’ll keep on top of it but it seems to be better. I think Microsoft’s security suite has a VPN if you use that for virus protection. I still have to see about the laptop and its VPN. 
Sorry Britmodeller!

[hsr]

8 minutes ago, chauncy said:

So after sighing in to my VPN it seems to load ok now. Weird.

It just started to load ok for me too, so not your VPN. Let's see how long it lasts

[treker_ed]

MS does have a VPN but it's not used as default, and it's an add on if you wish to use it. I don't use it, or any other VPN. At the moment I am not at home, and using another provider due to work being carried out on my house. Still not experiencing any of the reported delays to pages loading on BM.

Regarding clearing caches, that is something I do regularly on my laptop and desktop PC, but not on my mobile phone, so that's something else I don't believe is a contributing factor.

[ColonelKrypton]

12 hours ago, treker_ed said:

I'm looking through most of these comments and the only commonality is that you all seem to be in the US that are having problems. As has been said, it seems spread across many areas, and many ISPs BUT.... The BM server, as far as I am aware, is US based, so does not seem to be a latency issue, 

 

I am having these same issues with BM - on and off for some time. I am in Eastern Ontario Canada, not the US but close. 

 

My observation is that is seems the BM web page I am trying to view is waiting for something to load and that something is coming from somewhere else other than the BM server itself. 

 

BM does not host posted photos and users and using a wide variety of image hosting sites and post images by linking to those sites and there will also be the occasional post containing a link to some other non image hosting web site. Occasionally someone will post images to one of their topics and those images are initially not visible to other users but after sometime they will suddenly be visible. The images are in the topic but just appear as an empty frame. If you "right click" and select "open in new tab" you will see the image. This to me seems to indicate some sort of issue or disconnect between one or more of those image hosting sites.

 

I have not noticed this same behaviour with other web sites although it may also exist to a much lesser and observable degree although I do occasionally notice issues with having to wait for advertisements to load on some web pages before that web page is fully loaded.

 

Another perhaps related issue with BM is that emailed notifications from BM can take from a few minutes to arrive in my gmail account but often it can take many hours and even days for some to arrive.  I will frequently receive BM emailed notifications from some topics several days AFTER that specific reply wasted to that topic. 

 

Interestingly, as an aside but peripherally related, I can send an image from my mobile to my gmail account and for the most part it will only take a few seconds for it appear in my gmail account but from time to time it can take an hour or more. 

 

cheers, Graham