Still Having Login Problems?

[Jason Dunn]

If you're still having problems with needing to login every time you visit the site, try deleting your cookies. With Internet Explorer, this is accomplished by looking under TOOLS > INTERNET OPTIONS > DELETE COOKIES. I thought we had made some back-end system change that was screwing up the cookies, but now that I "tossed my cookies" as it were, things are working nicely again. The down side to this procedure is that it takes out all the cookies - I tried manually deleting the Pocket PC Thoughts cookie, but that didn't help...which makes me suspect I might have had a cookie that was somehow causing all the other cookies to be dysfunctional...so there you go!

[brianchris]

Despite your previous posts on this subject, it *just* dawned on me that I *am* suffering from this problem.

As most people do, I check PPC Thoughts from both my work computer and my home computer. While both are running WinXP Pro (using the default IE6 SP1 browser), my work terminal automatically remebers my PPC Thoughts login fine, while my home one does not.....I have to re-login at home everytime.

My only reason for posting this is perhaps it would help the PPC Thoughts team troubleshoot this, or help other users in some way.

A small nuisance when compared to the wounderful site that is Pocket PC Thoughts :wink:

-Brian

[Rirath]

Ack... don't tell people to delete ALL cookies just to solve one problem! Do you have any idea how much information this will erase? How many websites will stop working properly?

You have to go into the cookies folder, find the pocket pc thoughts cookie, and delete it. Nothing more. I'd be really surprised if this didn't work, the cookies can't interact or harm your computer in any way. Perhaps you deleted the wrong file, or an old cookie, or some other method where the cookie wasn't really erased. Cookies persists for the browser session, so you have to exit out of all browsers first or it might not really be gone.

If nothing else, it'd only take you folks 5 minutes to set up a link that would erase all known PPC thoughts cookies from a users computer when clicked. Just call the setcookie php command with the cookie name and without any varibles after it... like this:

setcookie("sitevisits");

then it'll be gone. Close all open browser windows after. That's the simple method.

[MPSmith]

I just couldn't make myself delete all my cookies....

It seems the only time I'm asked to log in is when I receive a private message. In order to read it, I have to log in. I don't recall ever having to log in simply to leave a post.

One other thing, I have the PPCThoughts Axim forum in my favorites. When I fgo throught favorites to reach the forum, I have to then click "refresh" to see the new entries since the last time I was there. This doesn't occur in any other Axim site I check under the same method. Does anyone know why that might be? Do I have to reformat my hard drive to make it work? :wink:

[Rirath]

One other thing, I have the PPCThoughts Axim forum in my favorites. When I fgo throught favorites to reach the forum, I have to then click "refresh" to see the new entries since the last time I was there. This doesn't occur in any other Axim site I check under the same method. Does anyone know why that might be? Do I have to reformat my hard drive to make it work? :wink:

Sounds like browser cache. I know you said it doesn't happen anywhere else, but maybe the other sites you check use different forum methods. Could also be the url you have bookmarked has out of date php variables being passed, but I kinda doubt that as it's a simple category number. Make sure this is the url you have bookmarked:

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=35

I hope the harddrive reformat thing was a joke. :? Reminds me of the inane user reviews over at C|Net. I don't care how harmless a program is, there's always someone shouting "I HAD TO REFORMAT MY HADRDIVE, REINSATLL WINDOWS, AND BUY A NEW COMP!". I know people that will stick in a factory restore disk just to clean out temp files every few months. :roll:

[MPSmith]

I meant to say it was the PPCThoughts auction block that was giving me fits. I list is as http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=13 in my favorites.

I can't check it its working right now, cuz noone's posted to it lately.

BTW, I was totally joking about the reformatting. I was trying to be sarcastic regarding Jason's suggestion of soft resetting your PPC to make it work... Just joshin

[Rirath]

At any rate, same method... should work A-ok. Browser cache is the only thing I can think of. :? Hmm. Good to hear about the reformatting. :wink: By soft resetting do you mean deleting all cookies or am I totally lost? :)

[Jason Dunn]

my work terminal automatically remebers my PPC Thoughts login fine, while my home one does not.....I have to re-login at home everytime.

I had the same issue - my laptop remembered it every time, but the desktop just started "forgetting" like crazy.

[Jason Dunn]

Ack... don't tell people to delete ALL cookies just to solve one problem! Do you have any idea how much information this will erase? How many websites will stop working properly?

Cookies contain information that is, by nature, temporary. If someone is relying on a cookie as their only source of password information, they shouldn't be. I clearly expressed in my post that this procedure would get rid of ALL the cookies, and users should only perform this procedure if they couldn't solve the login problem in any other way.

You have to go into the cookies folder, find the pocket pc thoughts cookie, and delete it. Nothing more.

I did that, and I wrote that in my post. Did you read the post before you opened fire on me?

I'd be really surprised if this didn't work, the cookies can't interact or harm your computer in any way. Perhaps you deleted the wrong file, or an old cookie, or some other method where the cookie wasn't really erased. Cookies persists for the browser session, so you have to exit out of all browsers first or it might not really be gone.

So what you're really saying is "Jason, I think you're too stupid to delete the right cookie." Guess again Tony, I did exactly what I said I did - I deleted the cookie manually, with no browser session active, and it didn't help. Understand? Don't talk down to me.

[Rirath]

I spent 45 minutes one night trying to find out why the heck I couldn't stop my page from reloading the same theme again and again until I remembered I forgot to close all the open browser windows to clear the cookie from memory. Heck, happens to the best of us. I just gave you the same advice I would give anyone. Be it an AOL user or Bill Gates himself. You presume much. ;) Yep, I fully read what you said, hence the sentence about "it should have worked" which came right after that period. :)

Users who delete all cookies should just keep in mind wiping all cookies will destroy a lot more than passwords.

[Gerard]

Well well, you've finally helped me to get a reliable login thing happening with my Casio. Indirectly, anyway. Like a couple of others here, I am extremely reluctant to delete all my saved cookies from the \Windows\Cookies folder just for the sake of one site. I have about 25 cookies which I maintain for all manner of sites, and estimate that setting them all up again (all at once or spread over whatever period) would take approximately an hour at dialup speeds. Lots of looking up passwords, remembering where I put stuff like bank account numbers, user IDs, whatever, and then tediously typing in login stuff and waiting for pages to load. No thanks.
So, knowing that the PPC uses a simpler cookie setup than a PC, I did a few simple things. I soft reset, then deleted the index.dat files in \Windows\History and \Windows\Cookies, then deleted both of the PocketPCThoughts cookies I found there. I deleted all the files and folders, including the index.dat file in \Windows\Temporary Internet Files. Then I opened every vaguely-named cookie TXT file in the Cookies folder, and found none relating to your site in any way. Then I soft reset again, and logged into your forum, exited PIE, soft reset again, and went back to this same thread. STILL LOGGED IN! Hooray! It worked! Maybe now notifications will work better too?
I make a habit every second or third day of using ftpView (went back to the older one, as SuperExplorer isn't really to my liking) to open the \Windows\Cookies folder and deleting everything non-critical above the index.dat file. FtpView, or SuperExplorer, they both auto-sort by date-added (as opposed to date of file creation, which they only use if you tap the Date column header) any opened folder in main memory. This doesn't work for FTP site folders or storage cards, but that's not important here... So I maintain a very trim Cookies folder anyway. Otherwise, there'd be hundreds or even thousands of 1KB and less files there. What a waste.
On a PC, this becomes problematic, as cookies are stored not only in the Cookies folder, but also in the User Data or Content or whatever they are called folders IE creates all over C:\WINDOWS, in myriad sub-folders. I tried once to chase all these down, and found that the PC Find feature was apparently blind to many of these locations. I also found, manually exploring, that some cookies could be found in as many as 6 locations! The exact same content in every TXT file, down to the last character! That's absurd. It was also one of the many reasons I gave up on using IE on a PC. PCs make me crazy (or crazier, depending on your opinion) in a lot of ways, and this one is so very typical of the Gatesian over-riding practices I absolutely cannot stand. If there's a major folder in WINDOWS called Cookies, that's where all the cookies should be, and nowhere else unless I tell them to be somewhere else.
So, this is why, I suspect, your attempts at manual deletion and login repair failed. Not to condescend, at all, really. I know, I've pissed you off lately with my critical comments. But I think maybe you are a little to sensitive too, no? The quickness to being offended in this thread seems a tad inappropriate, to my way of interpreting the earlier comments.
Anyway, I thank you for getting me on the right track. I hope to be a member here for as long as my interest in PPC stuff lasts, and wish you well in the continued growth of the site. I hope the review calibre continues to improve, and that any remaining bugs get hammered out. Please accept my sincere apology for yesterday's slightly snide comments on this login problem; that post was too much, I acknowledge.

[Janak Parekh]

Wow. You guys are quite dependent on cookies. Me, I use three different computers, at the minimum, so I can't depend on cookies. I also nuke my entire browsing profile whenever I upgrade Mozilla, so I'm almost "cookie-free" - it's merely a convenience, not a necessity, for me.

If you can't remember your passwords, I strongly suggest getting eWallet, CodeWallet, or FlexWallet, and storing it there. You'll be glad you did the day you have cookie corruption and/or you have to reinstall your computer.

Gerard's reasoning is one really useful motivation, but I use Thunderhawk a lot more than PIE myself, and I'm not sure how long its cookies last, as I keep on reentering my PPCT credentials every time.

--janak

[DrtyBlvd]

Interesting thread -

I use Office (W98) and home (x2 XP's) pcs' and have no problems 'auto-logging in' on the lot of them... :?:

Separately - is there a program that will 'reveal' what is contained in cookies? I'd like to extract such info as appropriate to store it elsewhere - but what's the best way of accomplishing this? There are rather a lot of cookies floating around my pcs.....

:?:

[Gerard]

Sure there is; Notepad. On a PC, anyway. On my PPCs I use GigaPad associated with these and all TXT files, but Pocket Word is the default. They're just text files, very simple and small.

[DrtyBlvd]

Mmm - I have nearly 2000 cookies on one PC - and I have three, albeit that some info will of course be a duplication - I could be there some time with notepad... :!: :?:

If there were something that would format the data within the cookie and present it in a decent fashion, it might expedite things a bit...

[Rirath]

Wow. You guys are quite dependent on cookies.
If you can't remember your passwords, I strongly suggest getting eWallet, CodeWallet, or FlexWallet, and storing it there.
--janak

It really is more than just passwords. Cookies store a lot of information that helps make the web experience more interactive and personal. And if you're highly active on the web like myself, we're talking hundreds of files and thousands of lines of info. (Turns out I have 949 cookies.)

As for the data in cookies... well, out of context it probably wouldn't make any sense at all. It's just stored variables, often in arrays that can be huge. It's like taking random words from an unknown speech.

[DrtyBlvd]

...As for the data in cookies... well, out of context it probably wouldn't make any sense at all. It's just stored variables, often in arrays that can be huge. It's like taking random words from an unknown speech.

Hence my wondering if there were a program around that compiled for you :D

[Gerard]

No, I think such a thing would be unlikely, or even impossible. Thing is, site-specific information is likely coded in such a way that it is non-standard, each cookie or cookie type reflecting differing database types or formats and highly divergent user information. A shopping site isn't likely to keep data in the same format as a forum, and yet again a bank site will keep very different sorts of, and differently structured data from, a streaming audio site.
They all share the TXT basic format, but I think that's about where the similarity ends... except of course that most or all contain a URL.

[Janak Parekh]

It really is more than just passwords. Cookies store a lot of information that helps make the web experience more interactive and personal. And if you're highly active on the web like myself, we're talking hundreds of files and thousands of lines of info. (Turns out I have 949 cookies.)
Oh, I know, although the biggest use of cookies is for credential caching. In my case, I've adapted to be non-cookie-dependent, and I'm very glad I am. Even stranger, I've grown mostly bookmark-indepedent (I have a few stored in My Yahoo, and my memory and Google do the rest). I can usually sit down at any PC and execute my desired websurfing as I want. I guess it comes out of doing consulting on lots of different PCs. :)

--janak