WinPatrol Internal Server Error

It’s only natural that problems occur at the worse possible time.  This week WinPatrol is having a unique sale for folks who want to upgrade to PLUS but couldn’t afford it.  I also released a new version of WinPatrol which always generates plenty of downloads and use by folks who haven’t installed WinPatrol in a while. You would have thought I was giving a demo on Good Morning America because yesterday our custom server stopped providing many features PLUS members.  Worse yet was our ability to create PLUS codes after customers made their payment broke.

As far as we know we weren’t attacked by the Syrian Electronic Army like the Washington Post.

Our problems started out around noon when users weren’t able to access any of our web pages. The technical support helper was quick to resolve that problem and I thought everything was fine.  Then I noticed most of our custom programs that run on the server including the one that provides PLUS Info were failing.  Users would see the following when requesting PLUS Info or when trying to create their newly purchased activation code.

My 2nd call to Verio web hosting support also seemed successful. The support rep helped me identify a few bugs that resulted from our earlier solution. It appeared that everyone could again access programs on the server.  Unfortunately, my confidence was short lived.

Late into the evening my third call was made in hopes we could isolate the reason why some programs worked and others didn’t.  By this time my patience and ability to think clearly wasn’t at it’s best.

I’ve now tracked down the main issue and hoped that today’s rep would be able to understand what occurred. It appears that something done during my first phone call created an entirely new problem. My ability to access my web pages no longer exists. I am hour on hour two waiting for a return phone call. 

While I haven’t calculated the lost business and reputation yet but I am happy that most PLUS members can access PLUS data.  If you can’t access your PLUS Info I can offer a quick solution.

Open up the main tabbed interface and click on the Options tab.
If you Uncheck the box in front of “Allow PLUS Info data collection” you’ll be able to obtain the correct PLUS data.
 

I hope to have everything back to normal soon and I apologize to anyone who is still waiting for a response to their Email.  While I don’t think I’ve lost any Emails getting the web server working has been my first priority

In other new…

Malwarebytes Reports WinPatrol as Unwanted
I have seen reports that our friends at Malwarebytes have flagged some of the files which are used by our install package as unwanted programs.  We use a install package called Installmate which has worked well and is completely safe.  If I detected any problems or unwanted programs I would be switching to a new installer immediately. I haven’t had a chance to talk to my good friends at Malwarebytes but I understand their next database update will correct any mention of WinPatrol files.