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sTunnel for modern email protocols in old email clients


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On 6/5/2021 at 8:07 PM, jumper said:

Can IE access the http:// version?

On 6/5/2021 at 8:32 PM, Dave-H said:

Sadly not.
I normally only have the system set to use the proxy with https sites, and without it the http URL just produces the standard "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" message, with no specific reason given.

On 6/6/2021 at 8:58 PM, Dave-H said:

The http URL works almost immediately in Google Chrome 49, but in IE8, again after a very long delay, I get the standard "cannot display the webpage" message without ProxHTTPSProxy,

14 hours ago, VistaLover said:

Is any other member here on Windows XP SP3 able to load that non-secure URI in IE8?
Just to confirm something's awry at your end, or not..

@Dave-H :

Thanks to @Sampei.Nihira and @XPerceniol, it has been established by this community that indeed something is broken in your XP partition :(...

On 6/4/2021 at 9:52 PM, Dave-H said:

I thought that might be the culprit, so I tried rolling it back to the previous version.
It seems that all the system certificate information is in the registry,
so I rolled back the registry using ERUNT to a time before the certificates update was done,
which made no difference at all.
Should I have done anything else to roll it back?

On 6/6/2021 at 8:58 PM, Dave-H said:

I tried rolling the registry back to before the update but it didn't make any difference, but i wasn't at all sure whether that was enough.

I had a read of

https://www.michev.info/Blog/Post/1435/windows-certificate-stores

Perhaps a full system restore (instead of only a registry restore) would have been better... Do you currently have System Restore Points prior to the suspect Certs Update? Have you tried re-applying the Certs Update, followed by a system reboot?
Are there any expired Intermediate Server Certificates present inside your Cert Store?

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Thanks everyone! :yes:
Unfortunately I'm tied up doing jury service at the moment so I haven't been able to give the time I would like to to troubleshoot this.

One important thing I have now done is to try my netbook, which also has XP on it, but it hasn't had the most recent Root Certificates update applied.
It also does not have ProxHTTPSProxy installed.

IE8 and the HOSTS file and pretty much everything else are unmodified, apart from IE8 having the TLS 1.2 enablement mods.

Trying to access the http version of that Sky logo works in IE8 on the netbook, but only after a very long delay, like about a minute.
This agrees with the behaviour on the main machine, where things usually do eventually appear in IE8 and Eudora (which uses the IE8 engine to display e-mails) but there is a huge delay.

So, whatever the problem is it seems to be affecting both machines, and is presumably nothing to do with the Root Certificates update, or ProxHTTPSProxy.

:dubbio:

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OK, finally some progress!
I took my netbook to a local restaurant and connected to their wi-fi.
On running IE8 on XP (it's a dual boot machine) I went to the http version of the Sky logo.
It loaded instantly, as everyone else here seems to have found!

I didn't change anything, brought the machine home, connected to my wi-fi, did the same test and IE8 just timed out with a "cannot display the webpage" after about a two minute delay.
So, it looks as if something has changed on my broadband connection, which is also from Sky.

I rebooted the router, no difference of course.
I can't see anything relevant in the router's settings.
Something must have changed though overnight on the 2/3rd June. It was working the previous night and not working the following morning.

I don't know where to go from here. If I ring Sky technical support and tell them I'm using IE8 on Windows XP, and with an e-mail client that hasn't been updated since 2006, they won't want to know!

This is now off-topic for this thread of course, but has anyone any suggestions what might have happened with my internet connection to cause this?
The symptom mainly seems to be that there is a problem getting images from some servers.
If I display a Sky e-mail for instance, there is a delay of aboiut two minutes with a white box, then everything suddenly appears except for the Sky logo at the top of the message. After about another minute, the logo suddenly appears. There is no activity in the ProxHTTPSProxy console until the elements appear, at which point the green success lines are suddenly all printed.

Some e-mails from other sources display completely immediately fine as they always did.
Others only display the text elements immediately, with no or only some images.
If I wait about two minutes (yes, it really is that long!) the missing images all suddenly appear.

Any suggestions very gratefully received, as my normal e-mail reading system is now unusable.
Thanks, Dave.
:)

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Sky won't know there's a problem if you don't report it, and only they can fix it.

Just tell them you have a custom internet device that had been working perfectly well on Sky and still works with other providers, so what did Sky change on this date?

 

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You're right of course! :yes:
I will try ringing them and see what they say.
I'm hoping at least I can find out from them what was changed overnight between Wednesday and Thursday last week.
Maybe they changed some security settings or certificates or started requiring another protocol, who knows?
At least if I can find that out, and I will I'm sure need to get to someone really technical, not one of the usual CS people, to do that, I can at least know if there is anything that can be done or there are any workarounds.
One thing I am sure of, they're not going to roll anything back for a lone XP/Eudora user!
:)

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LOL, that would be good!
I suspect I'm not going to get to anyone technical at Sky over the weekend, so I will have to try next week.
Unfortunately I'm probably going to be tied up doing jury service during all the hours that anyone useful might be available, but I will let you all know when I get any sort or answer on this.
:)

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Well I rang Sky today, and got pretty much the answer I expected.
They couldn't help me using an obsolete e-mail client, which is fair enough, but like most e-mail providers now they seem to think that if the e-mails are working OK in webmail, that's all OK. They don't expect people to be using anything else now, and seem to be very unwilling to support anything else.
Even if there is a problem with a current e-mail client like Outlook, they really don't want to know.
I guess I'm a dinosaur for wanting my e-mails to be saved actually on my machine, and not only "in the cloud"! :angry:

They said they couldn't tell me if any changes were made to the broadband system last week, because they're not given that information themselves, and there was no-one that a normal customer could speak to who might have that information. As the change, if there was one, would almost certainly have been security related, I guess that's fair enough.

Anyway, I then tried a few more tests, including resetting my router to its defaults.
I hadn't ever changed much anyway, only the wi-fi ID and the wi-fi channel.

I also reset ProxHTTPSProxy again.
I was getting connection error problems and was directed to go to the Sky broadband reconnection page, which seems to work and restore things, and then suddenly I found things were working again!
The e-mails are now loading with a couple of seconds delay instead of two minutes, as they were before.

I have absolutely no idea why it would have come good, but I'm just glad that it has!
Whether it will stay that way remains to be seen of course.

I'll let you all know!
Thanks for all the help as always.
Cheers, Dave.
:)

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42 minutes ago, Dave-H said:

and then suddenly I found things were working again!
The e-mails are now loading with a couple of seconds delay instead of two minutes, as they were before.

Well, digital "Gods" sure work in mysterious ways :P; at least you're now back and running! :cheerleader:
One last thing that hasn't been answered and am really curious about:

On 6/11/2021 at 8:06 PM, Dave-H said:

On running IE8 on XP (it's a dual boot machine) I went to the http version of the Sky logo.
It loaded instantly, as everyone else here seems to have found!

I didn't change anything, brought the machine home, connected to my wi-fi, did the same test and IE8 just timed out with a "cannot display the webpage" after about a two minute delay.
So, it looks as if something has changed on my broadband connection, which is also from Sky.

If you use IE8 now without ProxHTTPSProxy, does the plain HTTP logo URI,

http://helpforum.sky.com/html/assets/sky-community-v6.png

load? Because you had said that previously it didn't load at all, with or without ProxHTTPSProxy... :dubbio:
How are things now?

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The netbook machine I did the test with doesn't have ProxHTTPSProxy installed (or Eudora for that matter).
I used it simply because it's portable, which my desktop isn't of course.
The http linked Sky logo wouldn't load at all in IE8 on the netbook or desktop at home, but it did on the netbook when it was connected to the restaurant public wi-fi network.
The restaurant network was unsecured connection of course, which may have made the difference.
:)

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Well unfortunately it has gone partially back to as it was before.
:(
The e-mails from Sky are now taking a long time to display again. Not as bad as two minutes, it's more like 30 seconds now, but still not as it should be.
IE8 can still access the http logo fine on the desktop and the netbook, which is good so it's not completely reverted to as it was.
The https version still loads quickly on the desktop too, but not the netbook as it doesn't have HTTPSProxy installed of course.

I guess I'll have to keep on tweaking things now to see if I can get it back again to as it was last night!
:dubbio:

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OK, panic over!

I discovered that the problem was that my HOSTS file wasn't being read properly by Windows.
sky.com has to be blocked there or the messages take ages to display because it's looking for a web font which it can't access.
This was the original problem several years ago in fact!
According to my research, the system not reading the HOSTS file properly after it's been modified is not at all uncommon.
Despite it looking like a plain text file, Windows is actually quite fussy about how it's formatted.
Eventually I restored a backup, which worked!

Fingers crossed that it stays fixed this time!
:yes:

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No, indeed it doesn't!

I guess we'll never probably know what was happening there. Sky won't have changed anything I'm sure, so I can only assume that resetting the router and forcing a reset of the connection somehow fixed it.

I just hope it doesn't happen again.

🙂

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