My hosting provider has broken all versions of Spec and SpecWeb!

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zeerround

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Windows 10 AND 11.
A user notified me yesterday and I confirmed here. SpecWeb is crashing inside an Intel DLL (Not in SpecWeb itself).

Includes the version of SpecWeb in SpecScript as well.

:evil:


And, my build chain for SpecWeb no longer works, due to Intel dropping the product, and not renewing licensees and letting the existing ones expire.

The "new" product is x64 only (SpecWeb was x86), and is based on c++17 vs. c++11, so lots of stuff is different.

That's all the bad news. Better news is I've made some good progress, last night and today, and have something that runs. There are issues and it's not anywhere near ready to release but at this point I have hope.

It's also possible that either MS or Intel will fix what got broken with the update...

FYI the non SpecWeb methods in SpecScript continue to work, but if you pick "Feeling Lucky" and it picks SpecWeb, SepcWeb will crash and you won't get anything out.

I will post updates here, until I have a release.
 
Windows 10 AND 11.
A user notified me yesterday and I confirmed here. SpecWeb is crashing inside an Intel DLL (Not in SpecWeb itself).

Includes the version of SpecWeb in SpecScript as well.

:evil:


And, my build chain for SpecWeb no longer works, due to Intel dropping the product, and not renewing licensees and letting the existing ones expire.

The "new" product is x64 only (SpecWeb was x86), and is based on c++17 vs. c++11, so lots of stuff is different.

That's all the bad news. Better news is I've made some good progress, last night and today, and have something that runs. There are issues and it's not anywhere near ready to release but at this point I have hope.

It's also possible that either MS or Intel will fix what got broken with the update...

FYI the non SpecWeb methods in SpecScript continue to work, but if you pick "Feeling Lucky" and it picks SpecWeb, SepcWeb will crash and you won't get anything out.

I will post updates here, until I have a release.
I am eternally grateful for SpecWeb that lives happily on my Win 7 PC.
 
Not particularly relevant if a new solution is being sought that will solve the issue with Windows 10/11, but yesterday I tried to install SpecWeb 2.2 and 2.3beta4.1 on brand-new Windows 7 virtual machines (both 32- and 64-bits) and it never worked. I can't figure out why that would be, but I guess it doesn't matter now.
 
Here is an ugly Band-Aid for people to try while I continue work on this.

Edit (as Administrator) C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and add this line:

127.0.0.1 www.surroundbyus.com

This will block your connection to www.surroundbyus.com and SpecWeb will complain about not being able to check for a new version but it will run!

Then you will need to remember that block is there, if you ever want to go to surroundbyus.com for anything (like a new specweb version!). You CAN, however, got to surroundbyus.com, without the www.

I suppose a firewall rule would serve as well but haven't tested that.
 
I guess you could prove to yourself that this internet blocking will work, if you are shy about editing the hosts file, by taking your computer off line (turn off wifi/disconnect network) and then run specweb, as a test.
 
@zeerround: Thank you so much for that quick'n dirty trick! It works wonderfully. For those of us that run SpecWeb on a virtual machine on a Mac, things are even easier. My copy of SpecWeb lives on a Parallels Desktop virtual machine. Using Little Snitch, I've only had to block Parallels from ever going to www.surroundbyus.com and that does the trick. I can still visit Surroundbyus regularly on the Mac. Only my virtual Windows is crippled now.
 
Trying to fit this in between the cracks with my day job, etc....

The latest; Windows update etc. was a red herring. It looks like the surroundbyus.com hosting provider must have made some change that broke the accessibility to the version check, in SpecWeb, to require https. No doubt a security "feature".

I built a default apache setup in a linux VM and duplicated the functionality and pointed my hosts file to that webserver and SpecWeb started working again.

So the action moves from updating/debugging my build chain for SpecWeb to figuring what happened with the hosting provider and if there is a supported "fix". May take a few days, but a path that seems like it will return things to normal. Ya'll have the Band-aid in the meantime.
 
FYI my hosting provider has been zero help, even after escalating to tier 1 support. However I can/have tuned off http --> https redirect for the entire site, as they couldn't help me get the old behavior back, after their upgrade.

Anyway, that has returned Spec/SpecWeb operations back to normal.

If you want you can remove the "sink hole" line in your host file, for surroundbyus.com.
 
FWIW, it appears your hosting provider is back to his old tricks and SpecWeb will fail if an Internet connection is available. For those of us that run Windows as a virtual machine the solution is simple: Just disable the Internet on the guest machine when running SpecWeb. Although it will complain that it can't look for an update, the application will proceed without issues after that warning. Those running SpecWeb on physical hardware will need to somehow block Internet access for SpecWeb itself or the physical computer.
 
I hate to say it, but I was able to upmix yesterday, then today I am getting an error about not being able to check for an update.
 
I hate to say it, but I was able to upmix yesterday, then today I am getting an error about not being able to check for an update.
Just checked. It's working fine for me on my Windows virtual machine. No error messages whatsoever.
 
but, if you have flaky internet or want to use it sans ineternet/network, you can try the "edit your hosts file" solution up the thread. You will get the version check failed message however.

If I could fix this I would, but Intel screwed me over on my build chain and I can't make changes anymore. I really wish they would have let the old version run, vs. invalidating the license...
 
I edited the host file as you specified above, but still get the update error, and maybe more importantly (?) another popup saying "Error saving versioninfo.ini file" (which I also got before I edited the hosts file).

I wanted to add that the hosts file does indeed not allow me to go to www.surroundbyus.com (but can go to it minus the www). Still getting the same error messages. I guess I'll have to disable my internet to use SpecWeb.

Just disabled internet but still got the error! Not sure what to do now. I don't understand why everything was fine two days ago, but not now.
 
Last edited:
Can we be clear about getting and error and being allowed to continue and not being able to upmix at all? I stated that you would get the "could not check for update" error.

Not being able to save versioninfo.ini sounds like a full harddisk.
 
Can we be clear about getting and error and being allowed to continue and not being able to upmix at all? I stated that you would get the "could not check for update" error.

Not being able to save versioninfo.ini sounds like a full harddisk.
Thanks. No, I am unable to upmix. The program closes after the errors (last error says "finished processing with non zero status", even though nothing gets processed) . In the past I had the program installed on my D disk for instance. Currently (and it was working fine), it is on my C disk. It has 169 GB free. Actually output goes to another drive which has a couple terabytes of space available. I was thinking of moving the program to my D disk again to see if that would help (permission issue?)
 
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