Monday, October 1, 2007

Errors in October 2007

Since 19 September the official Mediamax blog has been reporting :

---
We are currently experiencing technical issues with our site. When attempting to access the site users may get a 401 error saying that they "are not authorized to view this page". Our IT team is working on correcting the situation. We will post here when it is resolved.
---

Nearly two weeks later and nothing has yet been posted to say it has been resolved.

Other known problems are files failing to upload, though you get no warning of this. They just do not appear.

Many files are inaccessible. Mediamax say they are working on it. See the quick link to the latest file availability audit on the right.

People being billed incorrectly. If you want to add your name to the list of those who want billing frozen until problems are resolved and dates rolled on by months already lost, then see the quick link on the right.

There are issues with the bulk uploader not working.

The Mediamaxusers poll for performance in September gives system reports as follows (30 votes at the time of writing):

No problems : 0%

Rare problems (within tolerable levels) : 4 (13%)

Significant problems (difficult to tolerate) : 13 (43%)

Extreme problems (causing severe difficulties) : 13 (43%)

If you didn't vote on your experience in September, you still have the first week in October to do so.

See the post previous to this one with suggestions for how Mediamax could improve status reports:
http://mediamaxusers.blogspot.com/2007/09/mediamax-system-status.html

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does anyone know what we are supposed to do with 'hiccup' filenames while we are waiting for MM's recovery system to work? I've got about 40 pdf's that don't work and can't be replaced by me. So do I just leave them where they are in the hosted area and confuse the shit out of everyone, or can I move them to another 'hidden' file (like trash). If I move them will they still be eligible for relinking to a recovered file?

This seems a rather obvious question, but of course MM are telling us nothing. Its not just bad survice - its positively stupid service! MM may be trying to recover dozens of files I dont even need anymore whilst at the same time overlooking the few that I really want.

Anonymous said...

Anyone know why this blog sometimes won't accept messages? 3 or 4 times I've written messages that won't send when I hit 'Publish'. The message above was mine to. I pasted it in after having had it stall when i first tried an hour ago. But i forgot to add my name.

Luzo Orbit said...

Regarding Beau's comment, no idea. Comments are enabled, without any moderation, so they should publish immediately.

I occassionally have problems with connections to blogger timing out, but that is rare and usually only one time when it happens.

Anyone else noticed any problems?

Anonymous said...

Have seen no problems with this Blog. Now MediaMax .. that's another story.

Returned yesterday from a short holiday in merry old England and I had hoped to see some progress after 5 days of no internet access. Ofcourse my hopes were quickly shattered reading up on various places.

Atm, uploading and processing is working pretty good ... for me that is, as one of my partners mentioned a 4-10Kb speed. In exchange for my good uploading and processing fortune the rest of my account is rendered totally useless.

I tried to download a couple of files last night and all gave the error message "there are no files to download". Next to that every action, whether it be copying, moving or sending gets hit with the general system error.

Like Hawkecrystal mentioned the lack of response or feedback is really annoying and makes it look like they're all doing nothing ... or are they actually doing nothing? I mean, I tested their MediaMax XL and submitted a fairly thorough report on it basically not working ... this was about 2 weeks ago I think, but I except for a thanks from John Hood here I haven't heard anything back. I would have figured they had another beta to test out a week ago for me to put through the wringer. The only excuse I'd accept would be that they decided to do something about their FTP fist instead of MM XL like I suggested and what was hinted in a private corresponce I had with John.

Well, back to uploading now at least this works for me atm (allthough I got that damn login popup crap twice yesterday ... luckily enough short lived in its persistance).

Anonymous said...

Well yesterday and today, I "successfully" (as reported by internet explorer) uploaded about 15 files (each about 50Mb), however over 24 hours has passed since the first batch uploaded and there's no sign of any of them in my account - so that's definitely a down-turn, as they would normally appear almost instantly.

MMXL seems to be uploading, but (without wishing to be too ungrateful) it's so slow I could personally deliver each file to the MM HQ and see them in my account quicker.

I am a bit frustrated at the lack of info on their blog (or from JH on here) for the last 2 weeks when it had started getting pretty good.

Perhaps they've all gone on holiday.....

Anonymous said...

I try testing the uploading about each day and mostly it fails with the common problem of not telling anything besides succes and not showing any files even after average 11 minutes.Tonight again it sucks.

Last week I emailed this again together with my test results.
This one was read because I got a record time response in 4 hours about some credits to lost dl for testing and the promise again to forward the issues to engineering. No further reply as usual.
I posted tonight on a forum that I suspect their problems are so fundamental/ basis they probably are throwing their software away and rebuilding it which will take a lot of time. So my thoughts are getting more and more sceptical.

Anonymous said...

Anyone else get double billed this month?

1139723 10/2/2007 2:00:54 AM Elite Membership Renewal ($9.95) 1139724 10/2/2007 2:00:54 AM Elite Membership Renewal ($9.95) 1001447 10/2/2007 3:02:48 AM MasterCard Payment $19.90

Anonymous said...

Just to have logged it ... I can't download anything ... not even uploads that just finished uploading and processing. Seems this is not system wide as the 2 fellow community members that responded on my home board report having no problems.

The general system 1000001 error which is still active has hit almost everyone, but curiously enough a few people seem at least able to send while most of us can't do anything.

To re-iterate earlier statements ... why isn't anything about these download and general system error to be read on the official Blog. At least acknowledge you're aware of the problem ... and if possible ... that you're fixing it and normal service is to be resumed soon ffs.

Anonymous said...

Tonight i have seen the first moment of sanity, i got one album uploaded without any problems in about 45 minutes, plse stay like this !!

Anonymous said...

45 minutes to upload a album?

Thats TERRIBLE.FUCK MEDIAWACK

Anonymous said...

at least it worked
and ehh my broadband is not that big
maybe it was 35 min or so but not much more or less. Today I heard somebody else already for whom it doesn't work at all today

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that insightfull comment Anonoymous. Next to JDs speed ever thought about the size that particular album might be? I've got flac encoded stuff of 350MB which even with my 200Kb upload takes nearly an hour to upload. If you have nothing insightfull or constructive to say please refrain from wasting everyones time posting crap like that.

/steps from soapbox

On with the order of the day .... day 4 and except for uploading and processing which work pretty darn well with only a few re-uploads the rest of my account has been taken hostage by genereal, major, captain, private Error 100001 which is guarding it's terrority which used to be my account fiercely.

Hello MediaMax, I'm ready for a fix for this so by all means.

Anonymous said...

strange that you report uploading to work today. it looks random when these problems appear but my best guess is some kind of capacity threshold when exceeded the problems arise

Anonymous said...

I don't think I've ever encountered a company with quite the barefaced gall of MediaMax. An already crippled service develops a further fault leaving it all but unuseable for the past 4-5 days.

Bad enough that they can't fix it within a reasonable timescale, but they refuse even to acknowledge the existence of the fault, although there's an official blog available that would at least assure subscribers that they're aware of the issue. Emails to support, the only other means of communication with this lamentable outfit get the standard auto-response which neither inform or reassure, merely infuriate.

MediaMax's attitude and actions throughout the whole of the recent foul-up provide a text book example of how NOT to treat paying customers. If MediaMax were a horse, they'd have shot it by now to put it out of its lingering misery!

Anonymous said...

willtriker- that looks like a DB issue so I've asked our DBA's to look into it. Any other information you have would be quite helpful. For instance what functions are you trying to perform when you get this error and when did you start getting it.

Also, you can just email that info and any other info you have to me directly.

Thanks,

-jh

Unknown said...

I wish I could use profanity!

Do I have a unique issue, as I haven't read anything about this one, ANYWHERE.

I can log into my account just fine. I cannot:
Upload anything...it just 'disappears'.
And, the worst problem:
ABSOLUTELY EVERY LINK THAT I (AND OTHER PEOPLE WITH WHOM I HAVE SHARED LINKS) CLICK ON GIVES ME THE MESSAGE:
THERE ARE NO FILES TO DOWNLOAD.

I can only assume that the contents of my ENTIRE account have been DELETED.

My account renewal is due this coming Sunday, October 7...it's an old Streamload account that isn't even offered anymore, $99.95 annually.
I feel helpless and trapped. No one responds to my emails. This is the worst sort of online fraud and the whatever governing body in the State of California that oversees fraud needs to fine them heavily for taking people's money and then not only NOT providing service but refusing to have anything to do with their customers.

My impression (one of them) of what is going on here is that, whoever owns Mediamax, is trying to run it 'on the cheap', using as few people and servers as possible, and they are simply overwhelmed by the massiveness of this service and the complaints under which I'm sure they are inundated (and rightly so).

I feel I should delete my account credit card info to prevent MM from charging my card this coming Oct 7, but then I will have lost my account for sure.

Help!

Thanks for letting me ventilate, guys. The frustration is enormous.

katiewilloughby

Anonymous said...

I wouldnt pay now if i were you
You can change your accnt to freeloader or a 4,95 account per month. If you don't want to pay delete your cc details.
Last thing maybe is email to
johnh@mediamax.com and ask your billing date to be rolled forward a couple of months to see how thing develop

About those problems yeah everybody has them for ages already

Anonymous said...

Like JD says you can downgrade your account. You have to realise though that your current account features are grandfathered in MediaMax so if you downgrade and upgrade again in the future you will not get the same deal you're having now.

Mike Brady said...

I don't ask for much from Mediamax. I just upload a weekly podcast and a few other mp3s. Except I can't. Tried it three times today and the file doesn't appear.

The service get's a D from me.

Unknown said...

Update on my post earlier this month: my account magically reappeared one day prior to my account renewal, so I allowed the renewal to go through.

Anyone else having problems with the uploader for the past several days now, including today?

If it isn't one problem, it's another!!

Anonymous said...

I have been unable to access my account since Aug 17 when Mediamax says that PayPal did not pay the monthly fee. My Amex statement shows otherwise. Then since I did not receive service I instructed PayPal to credit my account.

Ad-Vinylrecords said...

I've having this error for 4 weeks now it says Path Not Find Error
will someone explain to me what that means, because i can not download anything from mediamax
i've mailed 40 times to support of mediamax, but they mail nothing back.

grtz deballen40

Ad-Vinylrecords said...

I've having this error for 4 weeks now it says Path Not Find Error
will someone explain to me what that means, because i can not download anything from mediamax
i've mailed 40 times to support of mediamax, but they mail nothing back.

grtz deballen40

Luzo Orbit said...

The official blog says on 31 October 2007:

--
UPDATE: We're back up to normal speeds again and there is no longer a delay.

Previously:
Processing of uploads into individual accounts is going a tad slow this evening, so files won't immediately appear. This will also affect the uploading of files via our FTP Gateway (see below).

We will update this post when normal processing speed returns and apologize for the inconvenience.

Anonymous said...

Mediamax was powered by Streamload. I signed up for Streamload and it never worked. It constantly "lost" files. Rather than repair that problem and keep the otherwise nice concept, they re-branded their malfunctioning system as Mediamax. When they shifted the files over from Streamload, they destroyed them in droves. I had about 20 gigs of files, irreplaceable photographs, irreplaceable legal research and thousands of scans of documents I had to pay $1 a piece to make, and Mediamax destroyed them in droves. So bad was this service that its designers included automated error messages: "Oops! We've had a slight hiccup!" That message popped up every time I clicked on a file url to find the file missing and unaccounted for.


As an example, if I opened a page of about a dozen files in Mediamax, and printscreened that page, I would then end up red-circling up to 70% of the urls on that page as "Hiccups".


I print-screened hundreds of hiccups, in a very short period of time. I did not have WEEKS to spend tracking down all my destroyed files.


I was in the process of attempting to track down thousands of lost files when Mediamax took the entire service offline without a single email to notify me. They have apparently destroyed what remained of the entire contents.


According to other blogs online, the people behind Nirvanix, Streamload and Mediamax have once again re-branded their defective system and are inviting all of us suckers to once again upload our property for "safe, secure storage and backup".


Neither Streamload, nor Mediamax was ever safe or secure, or ever remotely lived up to the guarantees made for it at their web sites. The people behind the scenes ultimately refused to answer emails demanding that they account for lost and damaged files.


These people are so dangerous to your property that before you sign up and upload ANYWHERE on the net, you need to check out who owns it first. Because if it's these guys, they are sociopaths with no concern at all for their victims, and they'll just screw you again, then move on and re-brand.


P.S. At one point, I paid for the service, it made no difference, it still didn't work.


I just this afternoon found MEDIAFIRE.COM, unlimited storage for all kinds of files. I upload 167 files and immediately got 9 "ERROR" messages and 5 "FAILED". I don't understand this. I uploaded the SAME files into a WEB SITE and they all worked fine, first time. Why would there be so many errors and failures uploading to online storage? Do I have time to fart around with that?


I wonder who owns Mediafire?


If you aren't uploading too many files at once, you might like Mediafire.com, so if you're desperate, you can give it a try.


Warning: driveway.com SHRINKS photographs. They destroyed all my 5-meg high-res photos needed for a PRINT PUBLICATION by shrinking them down to 1 meg or less.


Warning: flikr also SHRINKS your digital photos. Personally, I don't know where an online service gets the gall to build in a feature that SHRINKS your original photography down to their preferred size, destroying your originals, but watch out for them.