I’ve been trying with both Opera Internet Browser and Outlook Express. In both programs it just opens the message like an email and it’s either blank or full of hexidecimal. How do I download the actual file? I know the file is there because a blank message is not 3 megs.
You’re better off downloading a standalone newsgroup client. Free Agent is a good one, and as the name implies, it’s free. I would caution you against using Outlook on the newsgroups, for security reasons.
I’ve been trying free agent too and having the same problem.
Is the problem with that particular file or all files?
Is there a header? It should say something like “begin xxx.xxx” with more info.
Are all the parts of the file present? If the first part doesn’t have a header, the answer is no, and you’re SOL.
Was it encoded with yEnc? It’ll say that in the header. If so, FreeAgent and Outlook don’t handle it automatically. Get another newsreader such as Xnews. There’s a bit of a learning curve with that one, but it works well.
I use two programs for Usenet access on Win9x boxes:
-Forte Agent (the non-free version) for general reading. It does handle binaries (including yEnc) but does a quite poor job on large files. To automatically download and decode a file, you can (for example) right-click on the message(s) and choose “Save all attachments”. You can also mark messages for later retrieval and some other options.
-Newsbin Pro for general binary file handling. I love this program and found it superior to several of the more commonly recommended programs. The interface is a bit different from most newsreaders, so you have to RTFM to understand what various menu options really mean, but once you learn it, it’s simple to use.
Any halfway decent news reading program written in the last couple years should handle yEnc easily enough. If not (e.g., you are stuck in AOL BadSoftwareHell), you just download the message bodies into a file and run a decoder on it.
The Usenet interface portions of all browsers are just limited hacks and shouldn’t be used.
(On Un*x boxes I use xrn and various other free programs, for that “old-timey” look and feel.)
I’m using Newsbin Pro now and having an entirely different problem; the headers won’t even display. It goes through the process of downloading them but the window stays blank. I RTFM (well, I watched the tutorial videos) so I know I’m doing it right.
That’s 4 programs I’ve tried and 4 failures, and while I’m not infallible, I’m pretty damn computer literate so I don’t think I made 4 stupid mistakes. One or 2, sure; four, I’m doubting it. I know newsgroups are pretty old, to the point that they’re getting archaic. Does anyone currently use them?
Are you trying to download the same file, or have you tried different files and it fails on all of them? If it’s just one file, it’s very possible it’s corrupt or incomplete. Not much you can do about it, I’m afraid, short of paying for an account on a commercial server. (A lot of ISP servers are unreliable and/or have short retention times.)
Could be your ISP’s message retention, usually they only keep stuff for a couple of days. If not that, some ISP’s have two different newsgroups servers, one for binaries and one for non-binaries. Could be that you’re hitting the wrong newsgroup server?
This really doesn’t make sense. Either you are reading the messages or you are downloading them. If you select the message, right click and on the menu choose “read post body” the message will appear in a little Notepad (Wordpad?) window. So you can see the message and all. If you just download the message contents, you don’t see it at all. It’s tucked into a folder. I don’t know the default one but check under “Preferences -> Options -> Setup -> Download path” and then look in that folder for the decoded files.
You seem to have a mistaken set of default assumptions about how newsreaders/decoders work and use the vocabulary in a non-standard way.
I know newsgroups are pretty old, to the point that they’re getting archaic. Does anyone currently use them?
Yeah, I do and hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of others as well. Newsgroups have been around since well before dialup accounts and the web. If that makes them archaic, then they are archaic, but if you want what newsgroups offer, then you are going to have to learn how to use them. They are childishly simple as far as I am concerned, but then again, I susbscribe to a premium news server and I use a great newsreader. But whatever the problems you are having, it is going to be up to you to sort it out. If blaming newsgroup technology for your inability to master them makes you feel better, then go for it. But if you want to make it happen, then you have to accept that the problems are at your end and deal with it. The ball is in your court.
The first thing you need to know is that basically all ISP based news servers suck. I suspect you are trying to download multipart messages and on a free newserver, and if that is the case, there is a good chance that some of the parts are missing, in which case there is nothing you can do about it except get a better server.
If your newsreader doesn’t identify incomplete files from complete files, then get a better newsreader. I use and recommend Xnews. Set it up, download the list of groups, get into one of them and then click in the “Q” column for the files you want to download. Hit the F4 key and presto!
Also, is the file you want part of a rar’ed set? If it is, you are going to need all the parts to see the whole thing. If you know whow to use a rar utility, then you can open the first part of a rar’ed archive without having all the parts, but again, you need to know what you are doing.
Newsgroups require a bit of a commitment. I use Giganews and pay $8/month for 2GB of downloads. They are currently running just under 68,000 available groups. Trust me, newsgroups are far from archaic… they are where the real shit is. P2P and the web are for kiddies and dilettantes. Real men read newsgroups and don’t kid yourself that it is any other way.
What is the file extension of the file you are trying to read? Knowing that will help us tell you about common problems associted with that particular file type.
Newsgroups are making a minor comeback. Firstoff, spamming has leveled off (it was spamming that nearly killed usenet/newsgroups) and maybe even tapered off. Second, more newsgroups are either officially moderated now or have some resident geeky people who know how to kill posts from servers, look up the sources, and rain some hell on the spammers. Finally, and probably most importantly, dedicated newsgroup reader software that’s of any quality has powerful filtering capabilities just like email programs do for email, and you can eliminate most of the spam (and viruses, newsgroups – at least binary newsgroups – do have viruses) by writing some filters.
I’m on the Mac and I recommend Hogwasher.
I’m sure there are PC equivalents, I just am not familiar with them. But quit using Outlook for Og’s sake. (ugh).
Well, I use Newsbin all the time–it’s one of the few shareware programs I’ve liked enough to register–so I can say that it does work.
Perhaps you’re looking at the wrong tab (Post List/Download List/Failed Files/Downloaded Files/Status Messages). Or, NB could be filtering out all the posts you’re expecting to see, either because they’re not binaries, they’re too small, or they’re of a type that NB is filtering out. Check the filter options; it looks like .com, .exe, .htm, .html, and .pif are rejected by default.
When you double click a group (in the group list on the left side), you’ll see a green arrow next to the group name and a progress bar at the bottom while the headers are being downloaded, and any posts that pass the filters will appear in the Post List. The caption on the tab will reflect the number of posts it found… “(1893/2325)” means that out of 2325 total posts, only 1893 passed the filters.
It might have nothing to do with the newsreader, but how your system is set to handle file extensions. Most newreaders just use the windows default file extension settings, although in some like Agent you can set specific programs for specific extensions under the MIME handling rules. Try to make sure your systems file associations are set to properly execute the files you wish to view or run.