Hanging on server check

[CalydorEstalon]

I have been unable to play for the past three or four days. When I try to log in the launcher hangs on checking if the servers are up, with the strange behavior that I can no longer click any of the buttons (eg. Minimize, Close etc.), and once I tab away from the window I can't bring it back to the foreground in any other way than minimizing more recently used windows.

The searching animation keeps playing, that pulsing diamond icon is getting really hypnotic.

Anyway, I'd really like to play again since I kinda have a VIP account with the clock ticking, and it's really starting to bug me that I'm basically flushing money out the toilet.

Suggestions on fixes should please keep 'uninstall, reinstall and download all patches again' to a last resort as that would take me a couple of days on this crappy net connection.

[CalydorEstalon]

Any thoughts on this problem?

[Mirthgar]

By any chance does putting the launcher into "Compact Mode" (third button in the row in the upper-right corner of the launcher) before it gets to server select work?

If it does what might be happening is your system may have a banner ad blocker for IE or in general that "sees" the launcher trying to load a jpg file with "ad" in the name over http and stops it. (The "ad" in question is the image that advertises on the launcher on the left hand side).

Usually you just need to find which banner ad block is running and add *.ddo.com and *.turbine.com to an "exceptions" or exclusions list for the banner ad blocking.

[CalydorEstalon]

Huh, that worked. Thanks.

The strange thing is I don't use IE and I'm pretty sure I haven't installed any ad blockers for it. Could updating to Firefox 4 a few days ago have anything to do with it? Come to think of it I did that around the time the problem started.

[attlithehun]

Same problem on my laptop but not on my desktop. The compacting worked just as you advised. Thanks