So I
thought life could get all smooth and peaceful eh? Wrong!
Eversince
I hooked up with Singnet's 10Mbps ADSL2+ plan, I not only had to deal with the connectivity issues when it came to certain external ISPs, my server's
IE has been exhibiting an odd disability to steadily receive responses from certain web servers out in the Internet.
Never mind if they were unimportant sites I visit rarely. But this is
MSDN Subscriptions and Passport we're talking here. This being my development server, it has always been the main platform where i download new software releases from MSDN. I had to retry through several rounds of timeouts before I can even get a sight of the Passport login page. Even then, the site context has been loss after I successfully login (if I even do), and I get redirected to the general Microsoft Worldwide page. To make matters worse, Windows Update is another site that refuses to work; the progression animation bar will ultimately lead to an error page stating something (what??) failed.
Think this is a problem with my new network plan or router? Well I wish (no, maybe not....) it was that simple. My laptop and desktop can surf to msdn.microsoft.com and login.passport.net just fine. Think it's something specific to Windows 2003? An instance running under Virtual Server 2005 in that very same "ill" server does just fine as well. It is because it's a domain controller? It has been for a long while now, and it was
fine before.
What is so "special" about this copy of IE in this server? I seriously cannot tell since the only noticable "change" has been external - the ISP network plan and router hardware. But that has been negated by evidence of other systems' green statuses.
Users usually cringe when they see cryptic lengthy messages. They hate to see/read something they don't (want to) understand. I hate it when software tries to be too "user-friendly" in their effort to deal with errorneous situations, and leaving not enough useful information to allow any significant diagnosis and troubleshooting.
It is too hard for software and systems to present
at least two levels of details for problems encountered? A Basic friendly message for the casual user and an Advanced detailed message for the tech veteran to attempt to fix the problem him/herself. Surely by letting others solve problems themselves would save the manufacturers'/developers' time, wouldn't it?