Thank you Greyhounds.

[jeffhergert]

The last few days I've been missing.  I couldn't log on to my account.  I read a post by Greyhounds where he mentioned he was having problems getting on the forums and that he had to use a different browser.  I thought I might try this fix also.

I downloaded Chrome, and lo and behold, I'm back. 

Jeff   

[SD70Dude]

Interesting.  I haven't had any trouble lately, with Chrome, Edge, or Firefox (well, except for the PM issue, but that's been around for years).

[jeffhergert]

SD70Dude

Interesting.  I haven't had any trouble lately, with Chrome, Edge, or Firefox (well, except for the PM issue, but that's been around for years).

 

 I was using Edge, still am for other things.  I contacted customer service via internet contact the first day I couldn't get logged on.  I got an auto-reply that they'll have someone get back to me.

Jeff

[SD70Dude]

I hope you aren't holding your breath.....

Maybe Canadian machines are immune to this particular virus.

[blhanel]

Jeff, I had the same issue and was using Chrome.  Read a post in the Chatterbox from someone who was advised to delete all their browser cookies (saved history).  I tried that, and got back in.

[Overmod]

Everyone, regardless of browser, will benefit from a periodic review of 'cookies' and removal of some of them ... often, many of them.  

Kalmbach stores 'persistent' login information in some of the cookies it sets.  Periodically, probably for security reasons, it tries to go through and 'log everyone off' so they can't just sit there connected to the servers for months and months ... this is SOP for good network management in organizations.   The problem is that, for whatever reasons, the way they do this doesn't remove or change the cookies on some -- often, many -- user's browsers.  This leads to the irritating situation where suddenly a user sees the required login prompt, enters valid 'credentials', but is simply returned to the login prompt as if nothing had happened.

(This is not the same thing as the problem with trying to access PMs from any version of Firefox later than 61.0, or from a mobile device using iOS, or individual user data by clicking on the member's name ... those are a different kind of fault.)  TO MY KNOWLEDGE THERE IS NO FAULT IN EDGE THAT WOULD MAKE IT INCOMPATIBLE WITH FORUM LOGIN.  If there were, it would be incumbent on Kalmbach to clearly document why such a step would need to be taken, with clear advice on what to do (and which browser families are not affected).  I note with considerable disapproval that what passes for IT support has not done this for the Firefox issue; although fixing the problem might not be their 'responsibility', responding to the concern surely was and is.)

 

The 'cure', for any browser that supports individual 'cookie' management, is to go into the security settings for the browser, and either delete the saved cookies (the only option in some idiot browser versions) or pull up the list of saved cookies and delete everything related to Kalmbach (in other words everything containing 'trains.com' somewhere in the name; including some hiding down at the end of the list apparently out of alphabetical order.  In most cases this will fix the problem without having to shut down and restart either the browser or the computer, but you may need to "flush the cache" (which on many browsers is done by holding down the Ctrl shift key and the function key F5 or equivalent together).

 

Now, it's a good idea to go through your cookies periodically and 'take out the trash', especially in the present age of frankly poorly crafted cookies that Kalmbach has taken to delivering through the Forum ads.  I have a number of persistent secure logins to different sites that I no longer remember the passwords (or in a couple of cases the dereferenced 'user names') for, and I don't use a cross-platform password manager across the wide range of device types and ages I currently use, so just wiping out cookies on a particular device or platform is not a good option for me.  However there's no doubt that cleaning out all the opportunistic little 'revenue maximizing' tracking cookies and persistent storage of content and other crap is a good practice.  

[jeffhergert]

blhanel

Jeff, I had the same issue and was using Chrome.  Read a post in the Chatterbox from someone who was advised to delete all their browser cookies (saved history).  I tried that, and got back in.

 

I tried that with Edge, but it didn't work.

Jeff

I went back into Edge when reading about the chance that the cookies may be saved in multiple 'addresses' for lack of a better word.  I found more that I had missed under a few other 'addresses'.  Once I located and removed them all, Edge works again.

I guess I should've known the first 'cleaning' didn't work when I thought I had removed ALL cookies, not just from Trains' sites, and passwords for other sites still worked.  Usually a thorough cleaning removes them, too.

Jeff