[Alan]

Forgive me if this if this post is a bit off-topic...I considered posting it to the OSI forum but felt it was more applicable here.

About 90 days ago I came upon a really neat little program called Status Buster (Google Advanced Search returns three sites for "Y! Status Buster 2.0"), which worked flawlessly until a few days ago. The other online status checkers I've found report an "invisible" user as offline while Status Buster queries an apparently offline Yahoo screen name and returns one of two results: "ScreenName" is online; or "ScreenName" is not logged into Messenger but may be online in Java Chat. If the "ScreenName" in question shows idle in your Friends list and/or their Yahoo Profile page but Status Buster returns an "online" result, the user may be away from their system but is logged into Messenger invisibly.

The opening screen allows one to select a server but recommends using the "Auto Unpatched Server Finder," with either choice taking you to the second screen. Here the Help field displays, "This is a very simple but nice to have program. Just insert a bot name and pass and log it in. Then put an ID in the victims box. and click bust them. It will tell you if their online even if their messy name is on invisible!!!" After entering the bot name & PW and hitting Login, the Status Bar would flash "connecting" for a couple of seconds, then "connected." The Unpatched Server Finder then typically returned, "Found Unpatched Server: (either cs1.* or) cs2.msg.dcn.yahoo.com." At this point the "Victim" (screen name) can be queried.

Now however, regardless of ANY combination of bot name/PW and/or Yahoo server name I use it neither connects nor timeouts (yesterday I returned to my PC after 3 hours to find "Connecting" STILL in the Status Bar). As NOTHING had changed on my end prior to this happening I'm wondering if it might it be related to Yahoo's protocol change? Thus far I've been unable to track down "Alkie," who is listed as the author, so if it requires a patch I guess I'm SOL.

Any clues?

Thanx VERY much in advance!