We have a customer who cannot login to anything that is password protected with .htaccess. Every time he goes to a page that has .htaccess protection, he immediately gets the "Authentication Required" message. He doesn't even get the prompt for username/password.

He was running IE 5.5, he uninstalled IE, repaired it, upgraded it to IE 6.0 and it is still happening. This is only working on IE by the way, he can access the username/password prompt and authenticate when he uses Netscape.

This is not related to web hosting and we of course not obligated to help him because this is a problem on his end, but I am pulling my hair out of curiosity.

Any ideas?

Thanks for the help :)

Tell him to go to

My Computer>
Control Panel>
Internet Options (or something similar)>
Security.......

its there somewhere :D

He probably enabled some overzealous security software. Most likely he needs to re-enable userdata persistance which is located tool=>internet options=>security=>custom level (or he may just have to back down a level to "medium" from this screen else...) then look under "miscellaneous" in the settings.

As a side note, if he's your client the unfortunate reality is that you have to support him. In web hosting, it is not uncommon for the provider to have to support all the major email clients, FrontPage, PHP, browsers, media clients, ftp clients, and a plethora of other apps that you never wrote. And, if you don't do it with a smile and assurance of "that's all right, that's what we are here for", you might get your wish that your client will head out the door (as in wish, but not want).

Thanks both of you guys for your help.

As a side note, valkaryn I just don't agree with you on that. We support pretty much everything and we like helping our customers, but there are certain things that simply go beyond the scope of support.

If you have 50 customers, you can certainly help them with everything, but if you have 5000, you cannot help them troubleshoot their Windows' registry or their Adobe Photoshop or teach them how to link images and/or write html documents. Again, we can help them as much as we can, but usually a good customer does and will understand when something is just beyond the scope of the hosting company's tech support department.

Just my point of view ;)

Originally posted by bert
Thanks both of you guys for your help.

As a side note, valkaryn I just don't agree with you on that. We support pretty much everything and we like helping our customers, but there are certain things that simply go beyond the scope of support.

If you have 50 customers, you can certainly help them with everything, but if you have 5000, you cannot help them troubleshoot their Windows' registry or their Adobe Photoshop or teach them how to link images and/or write html documents. Again, we can help them as much as we can, but usually a good customer does and will understand when something is just beyond the scope of the hosting company's tech support department.

Just my point of view ;)

I never said I liked the concept! It's just the reality. Or you're just another ho-hum hosting company. As a technical support manager for a large successful hosting company that started out with two Sparc 5's, I can tell you that our commitment to educating our customers is what made them stay with us when there were other problems. If you read these boards, you will note that it's never just one thing that leads to the decision, and lack of support underlying it is icing on the cake. One of things a technical support staff can do is make automated tools available or known (such as NetMonkey, etc.) to minimize the demand on them. But what do I know!

Originally posted by bert
Thanks both of you guys for your help.

As a side note, valkaryn I just don't agree with you on that. We support pretty much everything and we like helping our customers, but there are certain things that simply go beyond the scope of support.

If you have 50 customers, you can certainly help them with everything, but if you have 5000, you cannot help them troubleshoot their Windows' registry or their Adobe Photoshop or teach them how to link images and/or write html documents. Again, we can help them as much as we can, but usually a good customer does and will understand when something is just beyond the scope of the hosting company's tech support department.

Just my point of view ;)


Absolutely, totally and 100% right on the mark. :)

--Tina

I guess I know where *not* to recommend customers.

Thanks Tina :)

I have been in networking for many years. I have also been in customer service for many years. We don't help our customers with their Solitaire games or with their Microsoft Outlook's contact folders, but I can assure you our customers are extremely happy with our level of support.

Valkaryn, it is not fair for you to say that. I can guarantee you that our customers are extremely pleased. We help them with what we need to help them and we make sure problems are corrected when we are at fault.

Also, keep in mind that for 10, 20 or even 30 dollars a month, you cannot spend 3 hours teaching your customer how to write html. I think this forum is intended and was created to allow us to share our opinions and not to "attack" each other's point of view. It is also very sad that some users in this forum have been attacking other users lately as a way to promote themselves. :(

Excuse me, but I feel that a hosting company should focus on providing the BEST hosting service and support for that hosting service possible.

Hosting support does not include site design, development, supporting 100s of software issues and troubleshooting user-installed scripts and computer repair. It's just not economically realistic.

Maybe if you charge an outrageous fee, it would work...but, personally, we focus on providing the best HOSTING service possible.

--Tina

The formula that has caused hosting customers to follow me to new hosting company has been as follows:

Provide ample easy-to-access resources in the form of FAQs, online help with easy-to-follow graphics, and other online automated hand-holding services such as NetMonkey. You don't necessarily have to provide the information yourself, you *DO* have to provide an access path to the information. Perhaps you are already doing that and just aren't looking at it that way.

I, myself, would never advocate teaching a customer how to write a perl script, but I would provide information on sites that do and books that are helpful.

Third party software is a tricky thing. For instance, a major grocery store chain in the West coast was constantly having issues with their Outlook accessing the email service on an outsourced email cluster. After reviewing logs, performing a broad spectrum of diagnostics, and watching tcp/ip debugging sessions it was obvious that (this was three years ago) the email client outlook was choking on certain characters in the body of the email messages and dropping the connection.

Okay, sure this was a Major client and we are all willing to go that extra mile for them, But... (see my next post)

Okay, what you're talking about there is COMPLETELY not the same as what you were talking about before.

We have ALOT of documentation, FAQs, user Forums, etc. in place - which greatly reduces the amount of support calls.

That's entirely different than actually taking people hours and holding a customer's hand through website design/dev. and software issues.

--Tina

I have also had many clients that did not *appear* to be going very far. Some of their initial attempts didn't. BUT, because my team took the time to assist them at certain frustration points they learned and went onto become major players. They were definitely at the point of throwing up their hands and trying totally different medias. Because we supported them the following came out of it:

a) they went on to become major internet ventures
b) they didn't give up on the internet media itself
(far more insidious than moving to another hoster)
c) they remembered
d) they appreciated
e) we recaptured the revenue in the long run when they
became big
f) when they did become big they didn't move to someone
else because we took care of them


I have *always* encouraged customers to take the first step to learn on their own. The quantity that needs actual handholding is not that large. And, yes, there is a cut off point. There is always that customer who will make life extremely painful. Our staff made a mark for everytime one particular client called and sucked our time to "make sure he server was working properly". We even put a picture of a squalling baby up next to it.

But am I going to loose a client because he can't figure out how to link to an image the first time? No. Am I going to let him go because he can't remember what I taught the first three times? No. Because every opportunity you have to interact with your client is an opportunity to solidy the relationship and/or upsale a service.

Originally posted by AffordableHost
Okay, what you're talking about there is COMPLETELY not the same as what you were talking about before.
--Tina

Obviously, the lines of communication between are very disturbed with all the bristling and defensiveness that is going on. I have completely kept my focus on this issue here. If you care to outline why you think this is not so, I would be happy to address the issues. However, it may be more appropriate to take this to a more private forum as I am certain further flaming will not be appreciated here.

I guess this thread got totally off topic. There is not point here.

Good luck to you guys and thanks for assisting me with the IE issue :)

I think Tina was talking about the difference of a 'major client' opposed to a $25/yr-$120/yr. client. While money isn't everything and I'm not saying clients who pay $120/yr. for hosting aren't important to any host, if you were spending $6K/yr., you get a bit more service, pretty much a given.

As Bert said though, maybe it is time to return to the topic...

he immediately gets the "Authentication Required" message

Generally this is due to already having been to the site and failing (tho not always)

Simple things work... Clear cach, history and cookies..... Coldboot the system......

Webhosting.com used to have the same issue... but a client could access the same URL thru Netscape.....

Thanks MikeM. Actually, he cleared the cache and it didn't help. He even reinstalled IE. It ended up being a problem with userdata persistance.

It is working now. :)

glad to hear it...

Originally posted by valkaryn


Obviously, the lines of communication between are very disturbed with all the bristling and defensiveness that is going on. I have completely kept my focus on this issue here. If you care to outline why you think this is not so, I would be happy to address the issues. However, it may be more appropriate to take this to a more private forum as I am certain further flaming will not be appreciated here.


*shakes head in disbelief*

Huh?!? I am not flaming you in the least! Honest! I am not even defensive or irritated with this thread. Please, go back and read my posts again - there is absolutely NO hostility either implied or directed towards ANYONE.

--Tina

Originally posted by AffordableHost
Please, go back and read my posts again - there is absolutely NO hostility either implied or directed towards ANYONE.


Agreed.