The ShadowMusic Web Community

Hi,

I seem to be getting issues with the site hanging and constantly getting "Can't be reached".

It's only on this site - I use Chrome and Opera - both the same.

Is anyone else getting this problem?

SJB

Sorry to hear you're having problems but pleased to be able to say Im having none,
I hope someone on here can assist you.

There's more than one way of getting here. What url are you using?

Bob

Bob,

I am using :-

http://shadowmusic.bdme.co.uk/

It won't surprise me if its a local Virgin Media issue.

SJB

That should be ok. Blame Richard Branson.

Bob

Update.

Seems the issue was Virginmedia.

They say that if my signal drive level is low it will prevent me accessing some sites or slow some web page operations.

They have added users to the cable box at the end of the road - we often get problems just after.

All ok now.

Virgin Media has been giving poor service of late. It is owned by Liberty Global plc, an international company chaired by John C. Malone, a billionaire American business executive. It has no connection with Richard Branson.

Over the past few months, there have been many faults in our district. The (free) 0800 number that is offered to tell you if there is a fault in your district is faulty – it says ‘no fault’ when there is a fault.

One is therefore forced to phone their (not free) 0345 number to get technical support. It takes a wearisome five minutes to get past all the “Press 1 for X, Press 2 for Y . . .” nonsense before you can finally talk to Narindra, Vishtal, Ubair, Bilal, Sauras, or whoever happens to be on that day. They are all terribly polite and reluctantly they will admit that there is a fault. Occasionally they will even tell you when it will be fixed. You should get a discount on your bill for every day or part day that your broadband is out of action. Just to be sure, it’s worth reminding Narindra, Vishtal, etc and keeping notes of every day when you cannot use your broadband.

Virgin Broadband employs a form of bandwidth throttling whereby customer bandwidth is reduced temporarily after a threshold is reached during peak periods. This means that you will not get the broadband speed that the advertisements claim.

Sometimes if your broadband stops working you can get it to restart by using the old Microsoft trick of turning off the VM modem, or the modem and router if they are separate, and turning back on again.

If you have one of the older VM modems, it can stop working because of a VM upgrade. VM send upgrades to their modems at night over the network. They don’t tell you that they are doing this, they just do it. The trouble is that the upgrade for a modern modem can give an older modem a permanent fault. The only cure is a new modem. Lovely.
Ray