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I've been making photosynths for a few years on my travels but in China I can't seem to log in via the Photosynth app. I get this error:

photosynth login error
(In fact I hadn't realized until now that it's tied in to Windows Live.)

Oddly the Photosynth website is not blocked. You can view synths fine.

I've done some searching and can't find anybody else talking about not being able to make synths while in China.

It's been suggested by user djerry that it could be my proxy settings, but they seem to be set the recommended way as in the blog post about the issue:

proxy settings

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hippietrail
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    Might depend how your connection is made while in China. Maybe your connection passes through an extra firewall. As far as I know, it's not blocked in China, probably just their internet settings (or provider's). – Terry Jan 16 '14 at 12:47
  • I've tried to use it from several places in China. Right now I'm in a hostel in Beijin with Wi-Fi. I can't recall if the other places I tried were hostels or hotels. – hippietrail Jan 16 '14 at 12:52
  • Is SuperUser special in Stack Exchange? On the other sites I contribute to it's considered good manners to offer constructive criticism when voting to close a question. Pretty sad if it's different here )-: – hippietrail Jan 16 '14 at 12:53
  • As a workaround I've found that if I log in first via the website, which may seem to fail but then work anyway, a following attempt to log in via the app will succeed. – hippietrail Jan 16 '14 at 12:58
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    @hippietrail - I am not sure the reason people are saying this isn't about computer software or computer hardware because it clearly is. – Ramhound Jan 16 '14 at 13:42

2 Answers2

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I've done some research, and there might be several reasons why you cannot log in to PhotoSynth:

  • This application uses application/soap+xml which is often blocked by companies or in China perhaps authorities (see post)
  • Toggling the "automatically detect settings" option in IE can solve the issue (see post)
  • Uncheck "Check for publisher's certificate revocation" and " Check server fro certificate revocation" options

These are the most succesful results in case of this error.

Terry
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  • What if I'm using Google Chrome rather than IE? – hippietrail Jan 16 '14 at 13:01
  • As I only mentioned IE in the second solution, you can also change that option in other browsers. If you don't know where to do that, this link shows this for all popular browsers: https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/infosec/changing-to-automatically-detect-proxy-settings/ – Terry Jan 16 '14 at 13:08
  • It turns out that I already have it set up just how that blog post recommends. Adding that to my question. – hippietrail Jan 16 '14 at 13:32
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install Wireshark and check what site is it using to authenticate, then check it with this tool, and ping it from your computer. If it does not work on your computer, but the check says it's fine, then this might be an another problem

  • This looks promising. Downloading now. Will update if the question stays open ... – hippietrail Jan 16 '14 at 12:55
  • The download keeps getting sitently aborted part-way through. Very unusual but still trying. I've tried using wget on the command line but it fails due to something to do with the HTTPS ... – hippietrail Jan 16 '14 at 13:42
  • that's weird. perhaps the firewall blocks thing this way? check what does a really blocked site do. (I dont know any blocked site, hope you do) –  Jan 16 '14 at 16:33
  • Got one blocked, you could check how does this website responds: http://appspot.com –  Jan 16 '14 at 17:09
  • Yes in China I never can even guess what might be blocked by the country, province, city, ISP, hotel, or random poorly set up firewall at the hotel ... But maybe Stack Exchange experts who know a lot more than me about this stuff can help figure that out. `appspot.com` seems to be blocked totally too, which is usually a sure sign the GFoW is behind it. – hippietrail Jan 16 '14 at 17:14