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The State of WinCustomize Address

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The State of WinCustomize Address

Well, we really are not a state but we want to start legistlation to become one!

from WinCustomize Forums

As you all know WinCustomize has had more than its share of problems for the last year and especially the last few months.  Unfortunately we have not been able to give WinCustomize the attention that it deserves.  Two main reasons for this is because we are under staffed in our IT department and for the last several months our primary attention has been turned towards supporting the release of Galactic Civilizations II.

For many months are staff consisted of only 3 people to run WinCustomize.com, Stardock.com, TotalGaming.net, GalCiv1.com, PoliticalMachine.com, store.stardock.com, JoeUser.com, DesktopGadgets.com, SocietyGame.com, PowerUser.tv, XPThemes.com, our entire Database structure, Stardock Central Servers, all our Interal Database and Intranet needs, and of course now GalCiv2.com and its supporting sites.  But in January we hired another developer (Dean) to help lighten the load.  And starting next week we will have a new developer on board and by the years end we hope to hire a couple more developers.  So we are expanding our staff and we really hope to get everything fixed up properly this year.  So if you know of anyone who is interested in doing ASP.Net Web Development of if you are interested in it yourself and live in Michigan please send me a resume at [email protected]

While most of us were off working on GalCiv2.com, Dean has been slowly chomping away at converting WinCustomize from ASP.Net 1.14 to ASP.Net 2.0.  Yesterday we launched the new version of WinCustomize.  There really is not any new features with this new build of WinCustomize but there have been several tweaks to the code to improve performance and hopefully stability.  Some people are already reporting speed improvements so that is a good thing.  But always with updates there are always some bumps along the road as others are reporting logon issues. 

Many of the logon issues were occuring during our upgrade process because of an incompatability between cookies written under the different versions of ASP.Net.  If you are currently experiencing any logon/logoff issues please use this link ( https://www.wincustomize.com/killcookies.aspx ) to delete your WinCustomize cookies.  After that logon/relogon and if you still experience problems please report them here.

So over the course of the next couple of weeks we will be focusing on improving the stability and speed of WinCustomize.  So if you have any bugs or problems (no feature requests please) please report them here and we will do our best to get them fixed as soon as possible.

Also, we are adding additional servers to our server farm so we can load balance all of our sites better.  Not just WinCustomize but all our websites.  This should also help with speed and stability as well.

In a nutshell, thats where we are at and that is our plan.  We do apologize for all the site problems you have been enduring and we hope to turn things around.  And if we don't you have my permission to flog Dean (sorry Dean but my skin is a little sensitive and I don't want any bruises ;)  ) ..

4,887 views 117 replies
Reply #51 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Bug-squashers are winning.....

Jafo goes off to breed bigger and better bugs....

Reply #52 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I got this error today while navigating the forum. Thought it might help you!


An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. (provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond.)
Object Desktop - Get all of our enhancement utilities in one suite
Reply #53 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Hopefully we have the logon issues fixed now. Fingers crossed!


Still facing it ... (off and on)!!
Reply #54 from WinCustomize Forums Top
How about an "All Clear" notification when y'all are finished with the server installation so we can know where we are at in the process and not judging half way through before you are done this weekend?
Reply #55 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Agreed, Kenwas... that would be good to know!
Reply #56 from WinCustomize Forums Top
My problem is the phishing for my credit card details by your pals at sitemeter.
This is illegal and not what I expected from wincustomize.



I am fully paid up and logged in yet it happens on clicking on links from the
www.wincustomize.com home page.

Support does not reply, gone phishing too, mmm you were able to start this over Easter yet
not stop this illegal activity at this time.
I am angry and most disappointed !!
Reply #57 from WinCustomize Forums Top
As of this moment, what ever you did is amazing! My pages are loading in a tenth of a second, I hope it's not a dream....pinch me!
Reply #58 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Ausvet, I would advise you scan your system for Spyware/Malware... its definately NOT wincustomize or Stardock trying to send that information out.
Reply #59 from WinCustomize Forums Top
System has Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet suite set to scan nightly, found nothing.
Scanned free by adaware pro and spybot manually as well.
Reply #60 from WinCustomize Forums Top

Citizen Ausvet  sounds like you have been hit by a drive-by.

Wincustomize.com does NOT 'phish', though it does have a site 'counter' as many/most sites do.....it's a way to indicate traffic loads ...eg there are currently 905 registered Users in this Forum.

Scans via 'several' spyware proggies does not guarantee cleanliness.  [Some spyware proggies are even actual spyware themselves].

If it's an offsite link then can you indicate which...so it can be checked and/or removed.

Users have been known to post links to inappropriate destinations....most recent of which was to cracks/warez of Stardock's products....and such site often include spyware, etc.....and that's another good reason why we do not accept them...

Reply #61 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I don't know if it's getting buggier as you get deeper into this installation, but I have run into more problems. I am not geting updates on any of my watched threads, I cannot edit comments anymore, and images are starting to show up as broken.

I'm still hangin in though.
Reply #62 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Still no change here..things are still loading slow...still gettin errors.
Reply #63 from WinCustomize Forums Top
SDC , at the moment, "faster 'n snakes or the blink of an eye"

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #64 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Have not heard any update on status after the wekend server install. As of Tuesday 12:30 PM EST, things seem to have returned to the starting point of slow pages draws etc. An effort to navigate to anything, at least for me.
Reply #65 from WinCustomize Forums Top
and no edit function again.
Reply #66 from WinCustomize Forums Top
And having said that, things are flying again so go figure!
Reply #67 from WinCustomize Forums Top
And having said that, things are flying again so go figure!


Keep talking!!

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
Reply #68 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Still no changes here. I get a few spurts in speed but nothing to write home about. For the most part it seems to be slowing down even more.
Reply #69 from WinCustomize Forums Top
I have installed the Wincustomize demo browser but it keep crashing when ever I try to use any of its features, I get an error "Wincustomize browzer has encountered a problem and must close" can anyone tell me what is wrong and how to fix this problem?
Reply #70 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Logically, the better the site works, the more people will be able to surf the site at a given time, thus keeping the performance at a roughly equivalent level to what it was before. Thats my thoughts...
Reply #71 from WinCustomize Forums Top
So in other words...don't expect any real changes? Kinda pointless to even tell us "The big server update has arrived" if we're not going to notice any changes.
Reply #72 from WinCustomize Forums Top

So in other words...don't expect any real changes? Kinda pointless to even tell us "The big server update has arrived" if we're not going to notice any changes

You must have slipped off this planet into an alternate space/time continuum.

It's definitely an improvement...

Reply #73 from WinCustomize Forums Top
It's definitely an improvement...


Sorry Jafo... but I don't see any improvement. Maybe on your side of the space/time continuum, but not on mine. I still have to wait forever for pages to load and sometimes to the point of not even bothering and I go off to other sites. The only thing I don't see as much anymore are the server error pages. The main page loads in a flash...most of the time...after that it's a crap shoot. I would love to see an improvement...but its still very frustrating waiting for a page to load.
Reply #74 from WinCustomize Forums Top
Seems to me to be as fast as any site I access, as fast and faster.
Haven't been logged on more than a minute or two, but the speed is fine, here.
Will try all the bells and whistles now just to see...Edits, smilies,etc...so far all better!
[Current time: Sun. a.m. 10:46 MST, @741 Internet, -7hrs UTC Greenwich]
*It may be messing w/your servers, but just to "put my foot in it and 'blow the carbon out' ",
I sometimes stab the link another time midway thru the loading process *
[wonder when/if the email-notifications'll work again...]
Reply #75 from WinCustomize Forums Top
note: Hit "Edit" and got blank page with only Gal Civ ad https://www.wincustomize.com/showMsg.aspx?MsgID=Column%20'LineText'%20does%20not%20belong%20to%20table%20.