Am I the only one having trouble with Yahoo redirections?

[LS20]

i've noticed that when I used yahoo maps, or other yahoo features where they redirect me using the asterik, my browser (IE6 winxp sp1) will give me a 404 error

for example, i cant open this web page:

http://rd.yahoo.com/maps/home/input/*-http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?BFCat=&Pyt=Tmap&newFL=Use+Address+Below&addr=&csz=arkansas%2C+us&Country=us&Get%A0Map=Get+Map

what happened with this link is i went to maps.yahoo.com and entered Arkansas, US and clicked Get Map...

IE6 cant seem to resolve the http://www.url1.com*-http://www.url2.com part....


the same problem happens with my other computer at home (almost identical setup)

 

[Lord Evermore]

As far as I know, asterisks would be a forbidden character since the URL represents a sub-directory or file on the server and no file system allows asterisks (the exception would be when it is used as part of an "argument" being passed to a command on the server, such as a wildcard character, in which case it isn't part of the URL technically). Mozilla won't accept the URL either. I would expect that the problem isn't that your browser is ignoring the character, but that the server is ignoring it. I actually got a "connection refused" message when I tried to connect with Mozilla without Proxomitron.

I use Proxomitron to filter out redirects anyway, so I have to manually remove the first part and go to the URL myself for the results. I don't see what Yahoo needs to use a redirection for anyway in this case unless they're just counting hits.

 

[UNCjigga]

I'm having lots of trouble with yahoo redirects too. Sure I can take the whole rd.yahoo part out and it'll link fine but I shouldn't have to do this. If I reset my cookies will this be fixed??? Why does Yahoo suck??

 

[Lord Evermore]

If we cared much, somebody could ask Yahoo.

 

[dmk11]

Question for all the people above: Did you guys installed Kazaa lite?
kazaa lite comes with a HOSTS file. One line of that file is rd.yahoo and redirects it to your own computer..

Now, I've commented this line out, but I still have a problem... so it might not be it, but the fact that it's in the HOSTS file, it's very suspicious.

 

[Lord Evermore]

It never occurred to me that KazaaLite's HOSTS file would have blocked off that domain name.

I deleted the 5 occurrences in mine and the redirects work now. You may have multiple instances of it, so commenting out one won't make any difference.

 

[dmk11]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
It never occurred to me that KazaaLite's HOSTS file would have blocked off that domain name.

I deleted the 5 occurrences in mine and the redirects work now. You may have multiple instances of it, so commenting out one won't make any difference.

Great! this is a perfect example how 2 heads are better than one.. As you mentioned, there were multiple instances and I only commented one out.. now it works!

 

[datallah]

I noticed this problem a couple weeks ago when i installed kazaa lite...
Removing those lines will get rid of the problem (but you will also now get yahoo advertisments, oh well)

 

[Lord Evermore]

Well there are other Yahoo servers in the list, including one I recall as an ad server, so I would hope at least some are blocked. Yahoo may change server names but so could anybody else that we block out. Blocking out their redirection server isn't an elegant solution.

 

[DukeBilly]

Originally posted by: dmk11

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
It never occurred to me that KazaaLite's HOSTS file would have blocked off that domain name.

I deleted the 5 occurrences in mine and the redirects work now. You may have multiple instances of it, so commenting out one won't make any difference.

Great! this is a perfect example how 2 heads are better than one.. As you mentioned, there were multiple instances and I only commented one out.. now it works!

Can I add a 3rd less informed head. How do I delete the 5 occurrences to make the redirects work? Thank you in advance!

 

[DukeBilly]

When you install Kazaalite it has you put a host file into C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. Open this file with a program like notepad and find rd.yahoo.com and delete them (about 5 times). This will fix the yahoo redirect problem. fyi.

 

[unchoops23]

i had this same problem and figured it was the hosts file. Be careful to check thoroughly. I had rd.yahoo in mine more than once.