Purchasing Pro Pack

[sailor72]

I have been trying to upgrade the standard Railmaster to the Pro Pack version since November. I am currently running windows 10 on a laptop.

When I submit the order I get the following message pop up:

Unable to submit your order at this time - 200

Type set to l.

501 server cannot accept argument.

12003

I have sent several email requests to both support@rail-master.com and customercare@hornby.com.

I have not had a reply from the support@rail-master.com but I have received several back from Gary Todd at customer care, asking me to check my spam folders, which I have dione and there has been no mail from rail-master. I have informed Gary regrarding this and he stated that the only way to upgrade to the Pro-Pack version is through the Railmaster software.

Has anyone heard of this situation happening with upgrading to Pro-Pack and how does one get upgraded

 

 

 

[RDS]

ProPack is purchased from within RailMaster.

Click on the help icon at the top of the screen.  It is the 5th icon from the left, sometimes a question mark.

This opens up a window and at the bottom are a series of icons.  The shopping trolley picture, at the far right is used to purchase ProPack.

[Fishmanoz]

RDS, sailor has said he has already used the order process you describe and receives error messages.

 

Most likely suspect is AV software blocking RM.  Easy to check that - use the email facility for contacting HRMS in the Help screen and, if no auto reply received, the email has been blocked.  Then go to AC’s excellent separate site linked via the top sticky thread in the forum and go right through his AV section.

 

There is a second possibility too that has come up a couple of times - HRMS emails not getting through to your email address.  You can check this with contact via a second email?

[Chrissaf]

Has anyone heard of this situation happening with upgrading to Pro-Pack and how does one get upgraded.

.

Yes...... there is at least one other post on this forum reporting virtually the same thing. HRMS emails not getting through. The previously affected member, used his office 'work email' instead to receive his 'ProPack' upgrade key from HRMS.

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PS - the 12003 mentioned in your error message is almost certainly an indicator that your PC security is blocking parts of your RM software from accessing the Internet.

 

[RDS]

@Fishy

I agree it is probably AV blocking everything.

(sailor didn't actually say which method he had used but did specifically mention emails)

 

@sailor72

What Anti Virus system do you have?

[Augustus Caesar]

@sailor72

 

There are a couple of things you could check to see why mail isn't getting through to HRMS...

 

1. Check your firewall. Does it allow communication to RailMaster through there? If so then it isn't that which is causing the problem. If not you should add RailMaster to the list of cleared programs or at least tick the box which allows the connection through the PRIVATE side of your firewall. Domain will not work for you if you are not behind a server and public is only for places like cafe's, libraries and such. Try and use Windows own Firewalll over others especially Nortons or mcAfee and the likes.

 

2. Check your IP address on a site to see if the IP is being blocked. The reason for checking this is quite simple. Domains like those provided by free mail providers allocate pools of addresses  to folk and your address will be taken from that pool. If that IP address is blocked by spamhouses etc. then the whole pool is blocked. The switching off of your router will change your IP address provided by your ISP but you may just be allocated another address from that same pool.

 

3. To get your IP address do the following: In any search engine simply type 'what is my ip' (without the quotes) and the engine will invariably display your IP address. This is NOT any address that begins with either 10.?.?.? or 192.?.?.?. One of those will be your local IP address for your computer only.

 

You should then be able to use any one of several checkers (free) online in order to see if your IP is blocked. There are some that will will ask for a qualified domain name (such as bbc.co.uk for example if you have your own domain (I suspect not))... these deal with particular requests where the likes of businesses have their own domains. Use one that will check your IP only or find a list of spamhouses and check on their own sites. They even allow you to request unblocking (this is really favourable to those who have a static IP address allocated by their ISP).

 

All that above may seem a drastic and far-fetched way to check out your issue but it will rule out the possibility or nay that your IP is actually the culprit. This is far more common an issue than you may believe too and affects many individuals.

 

It is always the first port of call when I check domains where email is not being delivered as spamhouses will block some mail to some recipients and not others. Remember they can also block the recipient of mail and not just the sender.

 

See my Help Site at the top of this sub forum about Anti Virus as Fishy kindly pointed out earlier. There may be a little help there too regarding these products dependent upon what you have installed.

[sailor72]

Thanks for all your comments. I will check my AV software to see if there is an issue with it.

[RDS]

What happened next?

[sailor72]

Sorry for the delay in responding to your advice.

I removed the firewall and was then able to download the updated version 1.70 but I still get the same error message when trying to upgrade to Pro-Pack

[Augustus Caesar]

When you say you have removed your firewall... which AV program did this belong to?

If it was something like Norton's or McAfee's you should uninstall the FULL suite of programs each offers and not just the firewall itself. This is because residual parts of each of these are left installed and also left within the system registry. Norton's is particularly awkward as some releases require a second program from the same vendor to fully uninstall safely and securely.

 

It is possible that while the software firewall from one of these programs IS uninstalled it still may require you to allow access to the outside world for RailMaster via the Windows Firewall by placing a tick under the Private column of said firewall settings.

 

Can you confirm you have uninstalled all AV software and that your Windows Firewall shows RailMaster listed and access allowed under 'Private'?

 

We can then take you on to the next step if possible. We know you have error messages saying you cannot make payment and that it looks like their servers are being reached but that doesn't really mean too much at this stage as one part of the connection may be working but the second, which looks past the secure area of the connection, is not. Their servers need to know your connection is secure. This MIGHT be part of the problem... I can't say for definite as I cannot obviously see your PC personally. Let us know so we can move this forward for you.

[sailor72]

I have just got back to the train room after several months away.

I have uninsalled all of the anti virus software and turned off the firewall in windows defender.

I have also checked my ip address and it is not blocked.

Unfortunately I am still getting the same error message when I try to upgrade to pro-pack.

[96RAF]

There is no need to mess with Defender just allow it to list RM as an exception when it pops up.

[sailor72]

I have been working on other aspects of the layout and my laptop decided to crash on me. I purchased a new laptop and when I entered the new license that I had with a new e-link system I got the same message as when I was trying to upgrade to the pro pack on the old laptop.

I took the new laptop and e-link to a different location and used their router and I was able to download the license and I upgraded at the same time.

Obviously the problem has been with the router. Even after reseting and restoring it.

Thanks for all your help and comments on this issue with upgrading.

[Chrissaf]

There is a post somewhere on this forum where it came to light that HRMS (Hornby RailMaster Support) had implemented a number of IP address blocks on their servers and/or firewall to combat SCAMMERS. It would appear that instead of blocking individual IP addresses, they were blocking ranges of IP Addresses. The IP address is the Internet Protocol address that is allocated for your use by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) that identifies your router to everything else on the internet.

.

Anyway back to the plot.

.

Now it came to light in this post that was reporting the exact same issue as Sailor72 that their IP Address had unluckily been incorporated within one of the ranges of HRMS blocked addresses. This meant that the user activation requests were being blocked at the HRMS end and nothing to do with the users PC configuration.

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In the case of this previous post user. HRMS logged onto the users PC to investigate the activation error issue and then realised as part of that activity that the users IP address was a blocked one. HRMS unblocked the users address at their end, and the activation went through and the users error was fixed.

.

The reason that it is logical to deduce that Sailor72 is affected by the same issue, is because by taking the PC to a new different location and using the Internet service there instead. The IP address of the Internet router at the new location would be a completely different one. Presumably one that is not being blocked by HRMS.

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Another reason why a users IP address might become blocked. Would be where the address has unluckily and incorrectly been identified as being the IP address of a scammer and added to one of the anti-scam monitoring bodies. These anti-scam Internet organisations can then distribute these lists to other interested parties to add to their blocking processes. However one would expect in that scenario that the user would have experienced more wide-spread 'failure to communicate' errors than just one single internet site such as HRMS.

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[sailor72]

Thanks Chris, for your assesment of my situation. You are probably correct as Railmaster Support cannot email me directly as they have to go through Hornby customer care.