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 While you may not be the one playing Club Penguin, when your child encounters a Club Penguin error, you’ll be the one who is called upon for help. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “Mom! I can’t log onto Club Penguin!” While the Club Penguin Web site works most of the time, errors do occur. Among the more common errors are slow page loading errors, slow penguin movements, Web browser cache problems, Flash Player errors, and firewall blockage.

Slow page loading issues are often related to high traffic volume. The more penguins waddling around Club Penguin, the slower the site will be. When this is the case, the only solution is to wait a few minutes and try again. Other slow page load errors can occur when the page only partially downloads before stopping which is usually related to your Web browser’s cache. Sometimes, hitting the Refresh or Reload button will do the trick. Other times, you may need to clear your Web browser’s cache.

Clearing a Web browser’s cache of Temporary Internet Files solves a variety of computer errors and it’s fairly straightforward to do. The process varies from browser to browser but not by much. Here’s how to do it in Internet Explorer 7.0. Go to the Tools menu and click on Internet Options. Click the Delete button found under Browsing History. Find the Temporary Internet Files Delete button and delete them. Restart your browser and try logging into Club Penguin once again.

If this doesn’t work, reboot the computer and try again.

Slow connections are often due to high traffic volumes, bad server connections, having too many saved penguins in your account, and other issues with your computer such as having too many programs running. Logging off of Club Penguin and clicking on a different server (even one from another country) may speed up play. If you have more than four penguins, this can slow game play down too. Delete a few penguins from your startup screen and see if that helps. Don’t worry; the penguins aren’t gone for good. You can still play with them, only you’ll have to type in their name rather than click on an icon.

In order to play Club Penguin games or waddle around, you must have a working, up-to-date version of Flash Player installed on your computer. Even if you have Flash, you may need to update it to the most current version in order to get the most out of Club Penguin. The easiest way to do this is to first uninstall your current Flash player and then go to Adobe’s Flash Download Center and download the latest version.

Another common Club Penguin problem is when your computer’s firewall blocks Club Penguin. You may need to set your firewall to “trust” ClubPenguin.com.

Finally, your computer’s overall health could be affecting your Club Penguin connections. For example, if you are running low on memory or have very little bandwidth, you will get out of memory errors or your Club Penguin games may take forever to load. Since computer viruses and spyware can dramatically alter your computer’s performance for the worse, run a virus and spyware scan to rule out these malicious problems as a cause.

As a mother of an active 7-year-old, sites like Club Penguin are both a godsend and a little alarming. On one hand, it’s nice that my daughter has found a fun little place filled with cute penguins, games, and missions. While I work on my computer, she logs on and “waddles around” with other penguins. She’s been a Club Penguin secret agent, tour guide, and pirate. She’s been on missions, gone to “parties on the iceberg,” and searched for various trinkets. There’s no denying that it’s 100% fun.

However, I wasn’t about to let her waddle around and chat with other penguins without checking out the site first. I logged on as her penguin one night after she went to bed and waddled around. A few other penguins said “Hi” and other stock phrases. It turns out that Club Penguin has two levels of “chat” - one where the penguins can only pick from a menu of stock phrases and another where they can speak freely (though with filters).

If a penguin is talking to your kid and the messages are beyond the basic stock phrases, you will need to change your child’s penguin account so that only “ultimate safe chat” is enabled. Naturally, if the chats are ominous, threatening, or otherwise uncomfortable, report the offender to the Club Penguin Moderator (and other authorities depending on the situation).

Ultimate safe chat restricts chats to the predefined list of phrases, emoticons, and greetings. Your child will not see messages that are outside of these limits. The standard safe chat option allows penguins to chat with fewer restrictions. These chats are filtered for pre-approved phrases and have blocks in place to prevent transmitting phone numbers and other personal information. However, that’s not to say that offensive chats can’t take place or that kids can’t find another way to transmit their information.

To change your child’s chat options, log in and click on the question mark icon on your child’s penguin’s card menu. Next, log in as the Parent (you may need to create a Parent Account). Click on your child’s penguin followed by Parent’s Tools. Choose the level of chat that you prefer and click Submit.

The default account setting for all penguins is the Standard Safe Chat. If you want to limit your child’s chatting option, you must go in and change this setting to Ultimate Safe Chat. Do this for all penguins that your child has created.

While Club Penguin is fun for kids and quite safe once Ultimate Safe Chat has been enabled, it is introducing your child to social networking and Internet chatting which may be undesirable. After all, it won’t be long before your child graduates from the antics of cute little penguins and digs in to Web sites such as MySpace. If you will be allowing your child to play on Club Penguin, now’s the time to start the laying the groundwork about Internet safety.

 The iWin game Web site is loaded with dozens of free games as well as games for purchase and a monthly subscription for regular gaming. Like similar gaming Web sites, iWin games occasionally run into errors. Among the most common errors are system crashes, out of memory messages, driver issues, and DirectX compatibility.

Crashing computers and out of memory messages involving iWin games can be either hardware or software related. The technical support pages of iWin report that many iWin issues are related to incompatible device drivers for video cards, sound cards, and other devices. Updating your video and sound drivers may solve your compatibility issues with certain iWin games. To do so, go into Device Manager (this utility is found in the Control Panel under the System icon) and find your device in the list. Right-click the device and select Update Driver. When prompted, select the option for an automatic search and follow the prompts. Optionally, you can also go directly to the device manufacturer’s Web site and download the latest updated driver for your device and operating system.  

Hardware accelerators also interfere with many iWin games. These accelerators are often found on older video cards. If your video card has such a feature, consider reducing acceleration or disabling it altogether. To adjust acceleration, go to the Control Panel > choose Personalization > Display Settings. Click on Advanced Settings and then click on the Troubleshooting tab. If you see a slider under Hardware Acceleration, give it a slide toward reduced acceleration, click OK. Keep adjusting until you notice improvement. You will need to re-boot your computer each time for your changes to take effect. Once restarted, try your iWin game.

Out of memory issues are commonly related to having too many applications open at any given time. You can temporarily get around this by closing other applications when you want to play iWin games but it’s much better to reduce the number of automatic startup programs you have in the first place. Are you aware of how many programs your computer automatically starts each time you turn it on? Chances are, there are far more than you thought.

To limit the number of programs starting on each Windows start up, go to the Start button, click on Run and type in: msconfig

This launches the System Configuration utility. Click on Startup and you’ll see a list of each program that automatically launches whenever you start your computer. Many of the programs are necessary such as your anti-virus and anti-spyware applications. However, many others aren’t. Do you use Adobe Reader daily? How about Real Player? What about iTunes? These are just a sampling of applications that automatically place themselves in the Startup folder when you install the applications. Remove them from startup and free up system resources. Should you need to use the application, you can launch the application manually.

DirectX compatibility is also reportedly a common issue with iWin games. A simple update to the latest version of DirectX from Microsoft will likely solve DirectX related errors.

Gamespot is a popular online destination for gamers. However, things don’t always go as planned when playing games. Fortunately, you can make a few adjustments to your computer and you’ll be playing Gamespot games in a flash!

In fact, many Gamespot errors are related to the Adobe Flash Player. In order to get the latest version of Flash, you must first uninstall it and then reinstall the latest version from the Adobe Flash website. Make sure to close all open programs because if Flash is in use, it won’t uninstall properly.

Connection issues often involve cookies and firewalls. Gamespot requires cookies in order to work on your machine. Make sure that you allow cookies from Gamespot. If you have your browser set to block cookies from third parties, you can add Gamespot.com to the exception list by going to Tools >Internet Options >Privacy. Now, click on Edit and add www.gamespot.com to the list of exceptions.

In addition, add the following sites (these sites are used to host Gamespot content) to your firewall or browser’s list of trusted Web sites:

*.gamespot.com

i.i.com.com

image.com.com

js.revsci.net

mbox4.offermatica.com

Choppy video and/or poor quality video is often related to the specific Media Settings that you have selected. For example, if you have a broadband connection but the Media Settings is set to another type, the resulting video will be of poor quality. Use the following settings for each connection type:

56K - Dial-up 56K modem

DSL - DSL lines or cable modems

T1 - T1 connections or above

Another common issue with logging into Gamespot involves the security levels of your browser as well as the encryption strength. High security levels will block you from the Gamespot Web site. To change this setting to Medium, go to Internet Explorer and choose Tools >Internet Options. Click on the Security tab and slide the bar down to Medium-High. See if you can log in to Gamespot. If so, you’re done. If not, slide it down to Medium. Medium is the level that Gamespot recommends.

The cipher strength of your browser can also affect your ability to log in to Gamespot. Check your browser’s cipher strength by going to the Help menu and clicking on About Internet Explorer. Gamespot requires a cipher strength of 128-bits. If you have less than this, you must upgrade your cipher strength from Microsoft.

Gamespot works best with Internet Explorer 6 or 7 and Firefox 1.5x and 2.0 because Gamespot is specifically designed with these popular browsers in mind. While other browsers should be able to display Gamespot games, they are not specifically supported.

Several online gaming sites offer a variety of support tools to help you solve common gaming errors on your own. For example, dozens of gaming Web sites including EA.com and Pogo.com, offer a tool called UO Trace. This tool, which was originally designed for use with Ultima Online, is used for diagnosing Internet connectivity issues that may be interfering with your online gaming experience.

Are you ready to trace a route? If you have downloaded UOTrace.exe from EA.com or Pogo.com, go ahead and launch it by double clicking the file. Next, click on the Options menu and choose Advanced. Now, enter the name of the Web site that is giving you trouble. For example: www.pogo.com.

Now, click the Trace Route button. This will trace your route from your computer through a series of servers until successfully reaching Pogo.com. If successful, you’ll receive a message that tells you so. If not, you will receive a message detailing the problem.

However, these messages can be hard to interpret.  After all, what does “Maximum number of hops” mean? You can adjust the number of hops by going into Options >Settings and increasing the maximum number of hops.

UO Trace lists each host name or server that your information is routed through before reaching the destination site as well as average “ping” times. For example, your information may travel through twenty or more servers before finally arriving at the desired Web site. Any weak link will affect the performance of the game you are trying to play. UO Trace shows you the status of each server in the form of a colored shield icon next to the server name. Green shields indicate a good connection while varying shades moving from yellow to red to gray to black indicate worsening conditions.

Ping times are how fast data packets move from your computer to the host server. If you have ping times in the 200 millisecond range, you’ll notice that your performance is beginning to suffer. Pings above 225 milliseconds usually indicate heavy traffic conditions or other technical issues. As ping times get higher, your computer isn’t able to communicate with the game server fast enough to maintain fluid motions. You’ll notice jerky movements. In addition, if you are playing a multi-player game, other players may be moving faster than you since they are most likely connecting to the game server using a different route.

The hosts and servers are often beyond the control of your ISP. However, it never hurts to contact your ISP and find out if any options are available. Provide them with your UP Trace results and go from there. If the affected servers are beyond the ISP’s control, use the Who Is feature of the UO Trace software to find out their contact information. Simply right-click the host’s name and choose Who Is. Contact the host and explain the situation. You may be surprised at their prompt response.  

Depending on the game you are playing, you may have a resource-hungry application requiring more memory than your computer has. However, this isn’t always the case. Your computer may be infected with spyware or malware or it could simply have too many applications open at once. Before you decide that the computer game is at fault, consider the possibility of spyware infections.

For example, where are you getting your computer games in the first place? The Internet is filled with reputable free gaming sites as well as disreputable ones. If you are downloading freebies from an untrustworthy site, you could also be downloading malware. Not only do these malicious programs steal your personal data such as credit card numbers and passwords, they also use up a great deal of resources. In addition, it’s rare to find a computer with just one instance of spyware. If your computer has one spyware infection, it likely has dozens.

Having dozens of malicious programs running in the background, recording your keystrokes, and using your Internet connection to download more malware is sure to bring your computer to a screeching halt. The result? Out of error messages and possibly identity theft.

If you don’t have an anti-spyware utility on your system, you can run a free spyware scan to see what’s lurking. If nothing is found, you can rule out spyware as the cause of your game’s out of memory error message. If so, purchase the software and get rid of the spyware once and for all. Either way, installing an anti-spyware application is highly recommended.

Similarly, computer viruses can also slow your system down and generate out of memory errors. While you’re at it, scan your computer for viruses and make sure that your anti-virus application is up to date. Don’t have an anti-virus program? Say it isn’t so! ParetoLogic Anti-Virus Plus is a terrific solution that detects and removes both computer viruses as well as malware.

Once you’ve ruled out spyware and viruses as the cause of your game error, take a look at the programs that your computer automatically launches each time you turn on the PC. If you have Windows Vista, go to the Control Panel and choose Performance Information and Tools. Now, go to Manage Startup Programs (in the left pane). Here, you’ll see a list of all programs that have been placed in the Startup folder and their current settings (such as permitted or disabled). By default, these programs are grouped by publisher. For example, you’ll likely see a group titled Microsoft Corporation with applications such as Windows Defender and Microsoft Office.

You can then remove items from the Startup list by highlight the item and clicking Remove. This doesn’t remove the actual program from your computer; it simply stops it from loading automatically. For example, if each of your Microsoft Office applications is loading at startup, yet you rarely use them, your computer is wasting resources. These programs are taking up their fair share of memory. When you start your game and get an error message, it’s not so much that the game requires too much memory. Instead, what little memory it requires is simply not available because other programs are using it.