Tony just informed me that I was not the only person to experience the BBS crash on Tuesday 10/15 <??>. I'll stick my neck out and say I thought I was the cause, honestly. I hopped on the BBS at 11:16pm EST (so says my Netscape History) and started "Opening In New Window" all the threads that looked interesting.

At 11:23pm, I opened the "General" board. Seeing 5 topics I wanted to read, I happily clicked "Open In New Window" on all 5 in rapid succession. 2 loaded but the next 3 loaded in a strange way. The Empeg graphic at the top of each forum page was shifted down about half way on the screen. Doing a Ctrl-A, I was able to see the black-on-black text that was pushing the image down.

It was a SQL server error. Well, 4 of them, really. It was two repetitions of two different error messages. Damned if I can go through my cache and get the error, but I know it hit at 11:26pm EST.

Anyway, I found myself logged out. When I tried to log back in, I got a "Can Not Proceed" error, or something. This happened Wednesday, Thursday, and today (Friday). Feeling withdrawal from the board, I attempted to fix the problem, thinking it was with me.

Erasing my cookies file let me at least try to log in. I created a new user (FireFox32, who you won't hear much from probably) and was able to use it. My current user (FireFox31) was erased. So, I recreated FF31. To my surprise, I had all the PM's that I received before the crash. Unfortunately, my # of postings and personal settings were gone. Guess I'm a "new poster" again.

I hope that provides some insight into the BBS problems (if any). Sorry if I took down the BBS. I won't hit it so hard in the future.

I don't think your activity counts as hitting it "hard".

I hit it much harder than that each time I check it after having been away for long periods, and it's never brought it down before.

I often open so many threads in new windows at the same time (2+ rows of icons in my taskbar) that I reach some kind of a limit in Windows Explorer where it won't let me create any new windows and I start getting GDI errors. It doesn't sound like you were anywhere near this level.

The only reason I brought it up was not to accuse you of breaking the BBS, but to describe your experience (which you have done) just in case Tom can glean any information from it.

Well, it confirms what I know already, and I don't think you caused it. Sometime that evening, the user database locked it's self (a protection to prevent more damage usually), and when I unlocked it, 6 users were gone. The 6 people affected were on the board at the time.

I didn't see your name in the list when I compaired the database to the backup for some reason though. I'll count up your posts and update your post count here shortly.

edit: Although, you have pinpointed the time closer then I knew about, and that might help. The server keeps logs of all the SQL traffic, and now I can look at a smaller timeframe for errors.

> The only reason I brought it up was not to accuse you of breaking the BBS,
> but to describe your experience (which you have done) just in case Tom can
> glean any information from it.

No accusation taken. Heck, I accused myself.

Oh, and as for "New Window" limits, I've pushed Netscape 4.75 up to... 45 windows? Yes, shopping EBay (buying CDs) is SO much easier when you can just open all the windows at once and read them all later.

Drakino: I hope my time-stamp helped. Of course, my PC clock is set to my whacked-out watch. If you REALLY want, we could figure out our time offset somehow. Do PMs store timestamps? If so, I could send you one stating my current PC clock time. You could compare the BBS PM receive time to my whacked clock time to get a better offset. PM me if you want to try it.

It was your fault! All yours....Yours alone. Guilty as charged. What made ya do it? Were you after your five minutes of fame and glory? Try to act cool in the playground? Well sonny, you're gonna learn a lesson....you're goin' down...

Yes, PM's store a timestamp, and that would help me narrow down the log a bit more (as it's a huge file and I still haven't seen anything odd yet).