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Message of the Day (MOTD) Archives

2017

December 27, 2017, 11:45pm

Handling Obfuscated Posts

More people are posting files in an obfuscated format that isn't supported in versions of Newsbin prior to the current 6.80 beta. If you are downloading from NZB files that have obfuscated posts in them, you should upgrade to the latest beta which is 6.80 Beta 13

The beta is very stable and is close to production release. If you have any questions, please contact us through the Newsbin Support Form.

December 20, 2017, 5:30pm

Attention Astraweb Users

We've had several reports from Astraweb users who download post headers that they are getting "Bogus MaxSpool" errors. This is due to their servers resetting article counts on posts. The procedure you need to follow in order to resolve this issue is in our Troubleshooting FAQ.

Remember, only people downloading headers from Astraweb are impacted by this. If you are downloading using our Usenet Search Service or via NZB files, you are not effected.

If you need more help, feel free to contact us through the Newsbin Support Form.

November 29, 2017, 2:15pm

Contacting us with a hotmail or outlook account

We've discovered that Microsoft is blocking email from us for hotmail and probably for their other email addresses like live.com, outlook.com, and msn.com. If you have tried to contact us and never heard back, this would be the reason why. To receive email from us, you need to explicitly specify newsbin.com as a Safe Sender. To do this from the outlook web interface, click the gear icon in the upper right of the page and select Options. Then click "Safe senders" in the left sidebar and add newsbin.com using the displayed form.

Another option is to use an alternative non-Microsoft email account if one is available to you.

We have messages in to them to try to get us removed from whatever blacklist we are on. We apologize for any inconveniences.

November 24 - 27, 2017, 12:00pm

UsenetServer Cyber Week Promotion

Special pricing for UsenetServer available through December 1, 2017.

November 4, 2017, 7:10am

Server Maintenance Complete

We have completed the planned server maintenance. If you notice anything wonky, please let us know through our Support Page.

November 3, 2017, 10:00pm

Server Maintenance Window

We will be performing some server maintenance between 6:00am and 7:00am EST on Saturday November 4. Various systems will be down for a few minutes at a time but not all at once. The Newsbin Forums may have up to 5 minute downtime.

If it is after 7:00am EST and you find something isn't working right, please let us know.

October 30, 2017, 5:30pm

Version 6.80 Beta 10 Available

This version corrects a bug with the duplicate detection mechanism and includes some performance improvements for header processing. You can get the details from the Beta Download Page - click the "Changes in this Version" tab to view the latest changes. The download link is available on that page as well.

If you find any issues, you can either post to the Newsbin Forums or contact us through our Support Form.

October 4, 2017, 1:55pm

Version 6.80 Beta 9 Available

If you are running Sonarr with Newsbin, you'll want to upgrade to this version. It works much better with Sonarr now. There are also separate search history lists for Subject searches versus Poster searches. You can get the details from the Beta Download Page - click the "Changes in this Version" tab to view the latest changes. The download link is available on that page as well.

If you find any issues, you can either post to the Newsbin Forums or contact us through our Support Form.

September 8, 2017, 5:30pm

Version 6.80 Beta 7 Available

We've been testing Beta 7 for a few weeks now and it is pretty stable. The changes are too numerous to list here but if you are running any older beta release, you should upgrade to this one. You can get the details from the Beta Download Page - click the "Changes in this Version" tab to view the latest changes. The download link is available on that page as well.

If you find any issues, you can either post to the Newsbin Forums or contact us through our Support Form.

June 23, 2017, 6:30pm

Version 6.80 Beta 5 Available

We are ready for more people to give the latest beta a go. Usenet is in a constant state of flux with posters acquiring new posting styles and 6.80 Beta 5 has more logic to be able to handle more of these posting styles better. It also has some bug fixes that have been identified along the way. You can get the details from the Beta Download Page - click the "Change History" tab to view the latest changes.

If you find any issues, you can either post to the Newsbin Forums or contact us through our Support Form.

June 20, 2017, 3:00pm

Searching Usenet from within Newsbin

If you are using the Newsbin Internet Search service to search Usenet from within Newsbin, you will now need to be running Newsbin version 6.60 or higher. The upgrade is free, just download the installer from the Newsbin Download Page and run it. In most cases your settings will be preserved unless you are upgrading from a really old version.

The reason is that we are updating our servers to adhere to the latest security recommendations, which are to not support SSLv2 and SSLv3 anymore.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us through our Support Form.

May 17, 2017, 1:30pm

Registering Older Versions of Newsbin

Effective today, you can no longer register versions of Newsbin prior to 6.60 from within Newsbin. There is a workaround, you can install the latest version of Newsbin (which is now 6.73), register it, then downgrade to your preferred version. You can grab the installer for older versions from the Newsbin Archives. Run the installer after successfully registering a 6.60+ version and it will retain the registration. This will work for all 5.x and 6.x versions. Unfortunately, version 4.x is too old and we can no longer support its registration mechanism.

The reason is that we are updating our servers to adhere to the latest security recommendations, which are to not support SSLv2 and SSLv3 anymore. As a heads up, this change will be coming to the Search server as well so if you are a Newsbin Internet Search subscriber, you'll need to run at least version 6.60. We always recommend that you run the latest production release, all upgrades are free for life.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us through our Support Form.

May 5, 2017, 9:30am

Newsbin 6.80 Beta Available

We have begun beta testing for 6.80. We are actually at Beta 2 now, as Beta 1 was limited to a smaller audience. Version 6.80 has some major download engine improvements and addresses some issues found in the 6.7x series. You can get the details from the Beta Download Page - click the "Change History" tab to view the changes since 6.73. If you find any issues, you can either post to the Newsbin Forums or contact us through our Support Form.

April 25, 2017, 5:00pm

Conflict with Security Software

We are getting frequent reports of header download failures that are turning out to be caused by a software conflict with some security software.
If you are having this issue, you'll see this message in the Logging tab:

ERROR Server:My_Server NNTPServer: Compressed Headers - Timeout Waiting for Server to send Data Error: WSARecv Socket Error Code: 10060 A connection attempt failed...

There are two solutions:

  1. Disable XFeatures which is under Options -> Servers then click the "Really Advanced" button.
  2. Configure your security software to ignore Newsbin.

We are always available for help through our Support Form.

January 26, 2017, 8:30am

Important Message if you Download Headers

Several popular newsgroups on Usenet are getting spammed so hard it is causing performance problems in Newsbin for some users. If you are a subscriber to our Usenet Search Service or download from NZB files then you are not impacted by this.

To help resolve performance issues, we have released Newsbin Version 6.73 Release Candidate 2 that allows you to easily create a filter to prevent spam such as this from getting into the header database. This can cause increased resource usage and delays loading headers for viewing.

Once you install the latest version, follow these instructions to install the filter.

We are always available for help through our Support Form.

January 22, 2017, 5:00pm

How to Filter Spam During Header Downloads

If you do not download headers and instead use our Usenet Search Service or NZB files then you can disregard this MOTD

Several popular newsgroups have been flooded by posts that cannot be downloaded with Newsbin over the last few weeks. They are all from the same poster and can be filtered out during header download which is more efficient than letting it get added to the database and then removing them later. Quade posted instructions on the Newsbin Forums explaining how to do it.

We are always available for help through our Support Form.

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It's a pleasure to deal with one of the very few companies that still believe in customer service. M.R., Toronto, Canada - July 21, 2017