For three days now I have been unable to use the custom sounds in MSG Plus. If I click on a sound to send it, it says: "An error occured while contacting the server, please try again later. If the problem persists, check your security settings."

Now I have had it do this for a few hours before when the sound server was down or something, but never for three days straight. Anybody I talk to can send custom sounds, but me. My brother has a computer upstairs and he can send custom sounds, and he is on the same internet connection. Can anybody tell me what the problem might be? I have tried reinstalling MSG Plus, AND MSN, and neither option worked. I have tried closing MSN and closing MSG Plus and reopening both and that doesn't work. I am using MSN 7.0.0777 and MSG Plus 3.52.130 and I have Windows XP Home.

Thanks!

Check if you have firewalls on etc.

I do not have any firewalls. The sounds had been working pefectly fine, then suddenly three days ago they stopped. Windows firewall is also off.

Can you ping sounds.msgplus.net?

code:

---

Start > run > cmd enter

ping sounds.msgplus.net enter

---

Yes, I can ping the server. And now this morning suddenly the custom sounds work??! I am not sure what is causing this but they worked for a little while yesterday and then quit again. We will see how long they work today.

Edit
I spoke too soon. I was able to send one sound and they quit again with the same error message. This is really annoying.

I'll look into it, If it happens again, Try going to http://sounds.msgplus.net/ in a web browser and see what happens.

I can go to http://sounds.msgplus.net in the browser and it says: Stats will be back up shortly.

Here is the ping results:

ping sounds.msgplus.net

Pinging sounds.msgplus.net [67.15.135.18] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 67.15.135.18: bytes=32 time=98ms TTL=49
Reply from 67.15.135.18: bytes=32 time=96ms TTL=49
Reply from 67.15.135.18: bytes=32 time=98ms TTL=49
Reply from 67.15.135.18: bytes=32 time=97ms TTL=49

Ping statistics for 67.15.135.18:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 96ms, Maximum = 98ms, Average = 97ms

here is the tracert results:
tracert sounds.msgplus.net

Tracing route to sounds.msgplus.net [67.15.135.18]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  SpeedTouch.lan [10.0.0.138]
  2    54 ms    38 ms    39 ms  ctt191069.ceinetworks.com [216.169.191.69]
  3    37 ms    39 ms    37 ms  ctt191004.ceinetworks.com [216.169.191.4]
  4    37 ms    38 ms    37 ms  ctt191097.ceinetworks.com [216.169.191.97]
  5    49 ms    49 ms    49 ms  ewr-edge-01.inet.qwest.net [65.115.237.189]
  6    48 ms    49 ms    51 ms  ewr-core-01.inet.qwest.net [205.171.17.9]
  7    50 ms    49 ms    49 ms  jfk-core-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.8.246]
  8    50 ms    49 ms    49 ms  jfk-brdr-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.230.21]
  9    49 ms    49 ms    49 ms  129.250.9.209
10     *        *        *     Request timed out.
11    56 ms    57 ms    56 ms  p16-1-2-2.r21.asbnva01.us.bb.verio.net [129.250.4.27]
12    56 ms    58 ms    57 ms  p64-0-0-0.r20.asbnva01.us.bb.verio.net [129.250.2.34]
13    92 ms    93 ms    92 ms  p16-0-1-1.r21.dllstx09.us.bb.verio.net [129.250.5.34]
14    99 ms    97 ms    99 ms  p16-6-0-0.r02.hstntx01.us.bb.verio.net [129.250.5.101]
15   100 ms    99 ms    99 ms  ge-6.ev1.hstntx01.us.bb.verio.net [129.250.10.190]
16    98 ms   119 ms    98 ms  66.98.241.28
17    98 ms    98 ms    99 ms  66.98.241.114
18    98 ms    97 ms    97 ms  ev1s-67-15-31-198.ev1servers.net [67.15.31.198]
19   100 ms    99 ms   100 ms  ev1s-67-15-135-18.ev1servers.net [67.15.135.18]


Trace complete.

Ok, after all this time, I found out why my custom sounds were not playing. I have a program call Adsubtract, which as the name implies is an anti-ad, anti-pop up program. Well I got to thinking when I saw the post to check and see if sounds.msgplus.net was in the hosts file, and it wasn't. That got me thinking along that line and I turned off Adsubtract and the sounds work. I turn it back on and they quit. I am not sure how it stops the sounds, but I will toy around with it and see what I can figure out. I have been using this program all along and had sounds, it is only in the past few days that somehow it has been stopping them.

Ok, I seem to have figured this one out. You have to put sounds.msgplus.net in the list of websites to bypass filtering and you can run the program and have custom sounds. Adsubtract works as a proxy and filters out all ads in websites.

Thanks to all of you out there who gave me suggestions on what to try.

Thank you for providing this info. I've added it to my post/thread so more people can benefit from what you've found out