It seems fixed.  I am no longer getting the "Waiting for scripts.stardock.com" message.

@ M-203 - You might have already done this, but at the risk of sounding elementary, have you tried ipconfig /flushdns?  It's a long shot, but perhaps there are routers between you and Stardock that are adding to the slowdowns.  A new route night be a shot in the arm.

I only mention this because something similar happened to a network I administer when many clients got sporatic or lost communications.  Network collisions seemed to continue choking one particular section of the net for hours even after the server side was fixed.  At any rate, it can't hurt to try.

Beyond that, perhaps try a remote proxy and see if the problem continues.  At least that way, there would be more information to help come Monday.

So it seem to me that the period of "forum slowdown" has expired. Is anyone still observing this effect?

I would still hope to hear some kind of explanation as to the root cause and eventual fix.

Networks and networking is not exactly my thing.
How would I go about doing that?

@ Mumblefratz
It's not expired for me, it has been this slow for me since I discovered Wincustomize / Stardock a couple of years ago.
And it's not only these forums, but I can't say at this point what else is really slow,
otherwise someone will come in and delete my relevant post again!

This slowness, both on the forums, and the other slowness that I am not allowed mention,
are the reason I couldn't be bothered buying a Wincustomize subscription,
which, yes, I had been considering.

I understand and sympathize with your problem and the frustration that it can obviously cause. I hate it when I'm having some problem and everyone that doesn't have a similar problem jumps on the thread and says it's no problem for them and it must therefore be something that I'm doing wrong, even though *sometimes* they may even be right.

However, a forum (or other) access problem that has existed for years isn't the problem that most people here have been discussing. I have to assume but knowing a fair number of the people that have responded to this thread I think it's a reasonable assumption that most people are talking about an issue that started suddenly around 9/8/08 and seemed to disappear just as suddenly 9/12/08 (dates approximate).

I'm not saying your problem is not important, just that it's a *different* problem.

I can also understand your frustration if when trying to convey your specific problem in a thread that to all intents and purposes appears to be very closely related to your problem, your replies get moderated because they begin to stray slightly off the specific problem under the discussion.

The only thing that I can suggest is that your problem although similar in that it exhibits slow access to various of stardocks sites is a different problem. Generally when moderating the thread Andrew does mention that if you wish to discuss a *different* problem then simply open up a different thread.

You should take him up on that offer and open up a thread that specifically addresses the problem that you've been having. You should also probably email support directly at support@stardock.com. Also if your issue is primarily with WinCustomize then the best place to post your problem is probably the WinCustomize Site issues forum https://forums.wincustomize.com/forum/188.

I apologize for the trouble that you've had and hope that you have the patience to try the avenues I've suggested above to get your problem resolved. 

We were in the middle of investigating possible routing and networking issues with Cogent and Level2 when this had seemed to magically clear itself up. Our theories right now is that it was a combination of routing problems coupled with the firewall we're using. We think the firewall decided on its own to be incrediblydifficult and make it a pain for people to resolve (and download) bits of the forums which reside on other servers.

It's still a theory and it was such a problem that we're still looking into it to try and identify what the exact cause was, and to try and prevent it from happening in the future.

Good discussion all, lot's of great information in this post.

It's a DOS command.  Open a DOS window and type

ipconfig /flushdns

and hit enter.  If you've been experiencing slowdowns for more than a few days, it's not related to this topic and your route isn't likely to be the problem.  Like chicken soup though, it couldn't hurt. 

Ok, I did that thingy that MottiKhan suggested, and have now a different route,
and it appears to be a bit faster, however it's still what I'd call slow.

Here's the screenie of the route:

And here's the Tracert part of the deal:

NeoTrace Trace  Version 3.25  Results
Target: forums.wincustomize.com
Date: 15.09.2008 (Monday), 08:51:51
Nodes: 17

Node Data
Node Net Reg IP Address      Location            Node Name
   1   -   - 192.168.2.103   Hamm                Laptop
   2   1   - 192.168.2.1     Unknown            
   3   -   - 0.0.0.0         Unknown             Keine Antwort
   4   2   - 217.0.83.22     Unknown            
   5   3   1 62.154.16.165   Frankfurt am Main   f-ea5.f.de.net.dtag.de
   6   4   2 4.68.110.253    Frankfurt am Main   te-4-4.car2.frankfurt1.level3.net
   7   4   2 4.68.118.30     Frankfurt am Main   ae-31-51.ebr1.frankfurt1.level3.net
   8   -   - 0.0.0.0         Unknown             Keine Antwort
   9   4   2 4.69.137.50     WASHINGTON D.C.     ae-41.ebr2.washington1.level3.net
  10   4   2 4.69.132.69     WASHINGTON D.C.     ae-2.ebr2.chicago2.level3.net
  11   4   2 4.69.140.193    Chicago             ae-5.ebr2.chicago1.level3.net
  12   4   2 4.69.133.241    Detroit             ae-8-8.car1.detroit1.level3.net
  13   4   2 4.69.133.246    Detroit             ae-11-11.car2.detroit1.level3.net
  14   4   2 4.53.74.54      Detroit             i123.car2.detroit1.level3.net
  15   5   - 216.234.104.162 Detroit            
  16   6   3 209.124.63.234  Livonia             forums.wincustomize.com
  17   6   3 209.124.63.234  Livonia             forums.wincustomize.com

Packet Data
Node High Low  Avg  Tot  Lost
   1    0    0    0    1    0
   2    2    2    2    1    0
   3 ---- ---- ----    2    2
   4    7    7    7    1    0
   5   17   17   17    1    0
   6   19   19   19    1    0
   7   18   18   18    1    0
   8 ---- ---- ----    2    2
   9  110  110  110    1    0
  10  126  126  126    1    0
  11  126  126  126    1    0
  12  131  131  131    1    0
  13  129  129  129    1    0
  14  126  126  126    1    0
  15  126  126  126    1    0
  16  123  123  123    1    0
  17  124  124  124    1    0

And here's the original Windows Tracert output:

C:\>tracert forums.wincustomize.com

Routenverfolgung zu forums.wincustomize.com [209.124.63.234] über maximal 30 Abs
chnitte:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  speedport.ip [192.168.2.1]
  2     *        *        *     Zeitüberschreitung der Anforderung.
  3     6 ms     6 ms     5 ms  217.0.83.22
  4    96 ms    25 ms    15 ms  f-ea5.F.DE.net.DTAG.DE [62.154.16.165]
  5    73 ms   206 ms   206 ms  te-4-4.car2.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.68.110.253]

  6    16 ms    18 ms    17 ms  ae-31-51.ebr1.Frankfurt1.Level3.net [4.68.118.30
]
  7    34 ms    36 ms     *     ae-2.ebr2.Paris1.Level3.net [4.69.132.141]
  8     *      115 ms   109 ms  ae-41.ebr2.Washington1.Level3.net [4.69.137.50]

  9   125 ms   125 ms   125 ms  ae-2.ebr2.Chicago2.Level3.net [4.69.132.69]
 10   125 ms   125 ms   125 ms  ae-5.ebr2.Chicago1.Level3.net [4.69.140.193]
 11   130 ms   130 ms   130 ms  ae-8-8.car1.Detroit1.Level3.net [4.69.133.241]
 12   128 ms   128 ms   128 ms  ae-11-11.car2.Detroit1.Level3.net [4.69.133.246]

 13   124 ms   124 ms   124 ms  I123.car2.Detroit1.Level3.net [4.53.74.54]
 14   124 ms   124 ms   124 ms  216.234.104.162
 15   122 ms   123 ms   123 ms  forums.wincustomize.com [209.124.63.234]
 16   123 ms   123 ms   123 ms  forums.wincustomize.com [209.124.63.234]

//Edited by Moderator - had some bad html

Just a quick follow up. It would appear that many of the US-Based site I call up,
all go through the Paris1.Level3.net and then that Washington1.Level3.net IP.

And it would appear to me, that the bottleneck IS the Washington IP.
Because on the forum where I Admin/Mod, it runs on the same route, and also gets held up in Washington.

Any thoughts, comments suggestions?

I also experience severe Forum slowdowns.

I can pinpoint it to the browser, however.

Every browser other than Firefox renders the forum as fast as you'd expect. Only Firebox browsers (on windows and Mac) have speed problems. I haven't checked the load times, but the site is slow even after it's been completely loaded. Scrolling is a pain.

PS: Try using google chrome, opera or IE. If it's noticably faster then start firefox, open the forum site, go to the firefox menu bar and click Help->Report Broken Website.

Aroddo ....you're 8 months out of date....the issue isn't actually relevant as some respondents aren't still with us....

Just an FYI, and the database engineer is currently working on re-writing some of the queries behind the forums, as well as working on general performance improvements.  This may take a while, but when he's finished everything should run a little bit smoother

Bara