Several users have experienced trouble using the site, and have received an error (”Cannot contact farecompare.com airfare server”), or the results never finish loading after a search has begun.

Unfortunately it is difficult to troubleshoot this issue since we couldn’t duplicate the problem on any of our computers at the office. Finally, though, we caught a break - a colleague of one of our employee’s had the same problem several users have described. After discovering what his issue was, we thought it might be worthwhile to see if others are affected by the same setting.

We’re not sure which piece of software made the change to his computer, but since most of the folks that have complained about this error are AOL users (as he is), we’re suspecting the AOL software adds this to the computers settings.

Unfortunately, it is only one of many possibilities for this error, and is also a client side browser issue so it is not something that can be fixed for everybody by changing something on our servers.

OK, onto the results…

We found a Windows registry key (see image):

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings

Value ReceiveTimeout = dword

The value on the PC we looked at was set to 60 seconds. What this means to Internet Explorer is any website that takes longer than 60 seconds to return data - cut off the connection.

We also found that this setting is not present when the Microsoft default settings for Microsoft Internet Explorer are used.

Once we removed (deleted) this key from the registry, we had no further problems.

If you do indeed have that key set, it may have negative effects on any site that has a large amount of data to send (as we do) or that just takes longer than the setting in that key to load.

****The information we’re providing above and below is for informational purposes only, we are not encouraging you to edit your Windows registry, if done improperly it can damage your Windows software and your computer may no longer function properly. Please consult Microsoft or a local computer professional if you require assistance.

We’re including Microsoft’s KB article that describes how to backup, restore and edit the registry:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/322756