This blog is NOFOLLOW Free!
Print This Post Print This Post

BlogDesk Mysterious error and solution

PermaLink

I write to this blog using the BlogDesk off-line editor. When I set up this blog I spent a LOT, and I do mean a LOT of time trying to find a good offline editor. The solution to that problem escapes me to this day. BlogDesk is simply the best of a pretty awful lot. In my simple mind, as a user and a programmer, writing to a blog should be as easy as sending an email. Anyway.

Today I started working on my 1kW generator test post. When I finished it and tried to transmit it to my blog, I got this meaningless error:

error message

The message’s “suspicion” was correct. It didn’t have anything to do with WININET.DLL.

First thing I did, naturally, was check for updates. I had the current version. The second thing I did was re-install BlogDesk. I figured that this was yet another instance of those mysterious data termites undermining Microsoft’s finest. No good.

My third try was to go to blogdesk and look for a solution. I went to the forum and searched for “wininet.dll”. I found this page. You may notice something strange there. It’s in German. Only a kraut would be arrogant enough to put up a German support page for an internationally used software package, a language spoken by what? 0.0000000000001% of the world’s population? *sigh*. Like it or not, English is the (near) universal language of the web.

Thankfully Google Translate did a good enough job that I could muddle through. There I found the answer which was something very non-obvious.

Internet Exploder (the Microsoft flagship virus transmission service that also happens to display web pages) was set to “offline mode”. Look under “file”, “work offline”.

Now I’d rather get castrated with dull scissors than start Exploder so I have no idea how it got set for offline work. Especially how it got set between my last blog entry and the one I was working on.

Seems to me this is something that BlogDesk should detect. Even better, it should set Exploder online during a transmission instead of generating that meaningless error message. Oh well.

At least now other BlogDesk users who experience this problem will have the solution presented to them in Plain English.

John

Posted by neonjohn on January 21st, 2008 under Computing

3 Responses to “BlogDesk Mysterious error and solution”

  1. Phranc Says:
    February 5th, 2008 at 9:04 am

    Explorer will sometimes go to Offline if it or another program makes a winsock call and because of not being connected gets no response. So Explorer assumes you want to work off line.

  2. vikgrt Says:
    December 26th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    This error sure shocked me!! I assumed there was something wrong with XML RPC. Thanks a lot putting up this post, John. I slept well after realizing it wasn’t my website that was having trouble!!!

  3. Sergey Says:
    September 19th, 2010 at 5:23 pm

    I also was surpriced with this error. After reading your post i understood that the problem in windows internet connection settings. I’ve opened Internet Explorer and went to Tool-Internet Options-Connections-LAN. The proxy was ON here. So this software is using windows global netwok settings

Leave a Comment

Comments links could be nofollow free.

Archives

  • Meta

Meta