Monday 6 February 2012

We've Detected a Problem With Your Cookie Settings

No doubt the main reason I’ve not written the myriad blogs I’ve planned on the many lectures, exhibitions and events I’ve attended is because I naturally must devote most of my time to finding a job as well as juggling finances to eek out my few remaining pounds for a little bit longer. But I’d find it easier to dash a few quick things off (and possibly spare you these endlessly long ramblings) if I could just update Blogger on my main computer.

But 99.8% of the time, I cannot, and I don’t understand why not. I’m usually quite clever with computers, too. But even though iGoogle and the Google News page will show that I’m signed in, if I try to access the posting area of Blogger, I get an infuriating Google Accounts error page.

“We've detected a problem with your cookie settings,” it proclaims in a faux gentle yet intensely annoying way. It tells me I must enable cookies, clear my Internet cache and cookies, and adjust my privacy settings, but I feel no compulsion to trust them to Google. Why does Google require this when everyone else manages fine? And yes, I’ve added the various Google URLs as trusted sites. Nevertheless, I’ve tried--numerous times--everything the error page has suggested (though I don’t want to be as lax as Google wants me to be), even in a moment of mad desperation switching off my security software to see if I could gain temporary access to my blog that way. Nothing worked.

Yet about twice that I can remember, I’ve been able to access my blog without problems. But that seems to have just been a happy fluke.

So if I want to post something, I have to save my pictures and other files on a USB stick or cramped NAS drive and dig out an ailing retired, unreliable laptop, fire that up soooo slowly and, once it’s finally working, I can usually post the blog from there. But it’s a massive pain. Why can’t I just use my main computer? They both use Windows 7, the same security package and internet browser (the latest IE). Unusually, I found no suggestions online that helped. Am I seriously the only one with this infuriating issue? Am I doing something remarkably stupid?

I don’t expect many people read my stream of consciousness rants so I doubt any of this matters, but it would be lovely to have the convenience of convenience. Answers on an e-postcard (or comment) if you can help. Thanks muchly.

2 comments:

WH said...

No proper answer from me I'm afraid, but checking if the same problem happens with Firefox or Chrome would be a good start (i.e. is it a browser problem, or a computer problem). The usual answer is to clear all browser caches (delete all cookies in particular), and lower any security settings (could well just be IE being overjealous in its protections).

Will

Brain Tracer said...

A breathtakingly tardy thanks from me....this is the first chance I've had to get out the old laptop on which blog posting works (my case in point). I'd tried without luck all the things you've mentioned except for looking at Chrome, so maybe I'll try that, too, although I have IE on all PCs and it works on this one. I remain hopeful that Google will tweak something one day so the problem disappears. Thanks again for your reply.