Okay, so, I'm running Vista, but all of a sudden, my version of the DD Alerter isn't quite working right any more. It used to work great, but now, every time I start it up, it displays that "Using the alerter for the first time? Here's what it does!" message box. It'll tell me when people update comics or when I get a comment for a few hours, but eventually, it just starts telling me "Unhandled exception in etc. etc." and not giving me any other info. Basically, after a while, it just stops working.
I've also heard some of my friends who also use the alerter say that sometimes, comics update but don't show up on the alerter for some reason.

Has anyone else had this problem and have a fix? Or is it just me?

EDIT: Oh, and, sorry if I posted this in the wrong forum. Feel free to move it at your leisure.

I think I found your problem.

Not that I think vista is bad, but it's got security issues.

I didn't realise the alerter was even compatible with Vista.

It probably isn't, technically speaking. It's meant to work on .NET 2.0, but if Vista implements that differently than XP, it's going to affect the Alerter.

Mine has been doing that a LOT lately. So, it's not just you.

I run Windows XP. Haven't changed my computer/browser/OS I downloaded the alerter over a year ago.

That wouldn't be because of your OS or the alerter on your computer.
What it indicates to me is that it's something going on with the server end: here, not with you.

It could be related to changes in coding here on the site, but I suspect it has more to do with the demands that DD stuff is making on our server CPU these days which is what causes things to go wrong on the site occasionally.

I'm having problems with my alerter too. I'm not sure if it's server based or not. I'm contantly getting an error relating to the Microsoft .NET program to which the alerter shuts down and seems to "restart."

And usually at around 4am, I'll get an error from the alerter saying "user does not exist."

Depending on your time zone, there is an hour in the early morning (4am pacific I think) where the server runs its maintenance routines and the site and alerter go all wonky for about 10-20 minutes, and can't communicate with the database. That's probably what's happening to you, unless you're talking 4am England time or something.