Troubleshooting a problem

We've made every effort to ensure that Gamerzines are easy to load and use, but inevitably with such an advanced mixture of pages, multimedia and video, there will be some small problems. This page gives solutions for all known issues, even if they are ones only reported by a single user, so if you have a problem, you should find the answer here.

Magazine problems

Problem: The Gamerzine will not open, and says that the file is corrupt. (PC)
Solution: Most likely, you are trying to open the file in an old version of Adobe Reader (v5 or below), or even in a third party PDF viewer. You need to use Adobe Reader 6 or above, because this version supports the multimedia layers we use. We recommend that you install version 8, as includes several fixes and security updates. If this isn't the problem, then it is possible, though unlikely, that the file has been corrupted during download. If re-opening the file doesn't work, try downloading it again from our site.

Problem: The Gamerzine loads, but I can see white boxes where I think there should be images. (PC)
Solution: Your machine has Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) installed, whether you use it as a browser or not - it may have been installed by Windows as an Automatic Update. IE7 is the latest browser from Microsoft and it introduces an error to your system which stops PDF from functioning fully. Adobe had fixed this bug in their latest version of their reader. Install version 8 and the white squares will be replaced with multimedia content.

Windows Vista: If you have installed Reader 8 on Vista and still see white boxes, then you are probably using a browser other than Internet Explorer (and why not). However, for the multimedia to work, we need you to load Internet Explorer just this once and go to the Adobe website and install the Adobe Flash player, even if you already have Flash installed in your existing browser (Firefox, etc). Adobe Reader uses the IE implementation of Flash and you need to have it installed. Once installed, the magazines will run correctly and you can use your normal browser to download the magazines.

Problem: The video looks strange, like it only has a few colours. (PC)
You have a very old version of Windows Media Player installed. Update it to version 10 or 11.

Problem: All I can see are a few images, no text. (Mac)
Solution: You cannot use the built-in PDF viewer (or any third party PDF viewer) because these viewers are only capable of using PDF 1.0 and the Gamerzines use PDF 1.5 for the multimedia layers. Open the Gamerzine in a version of Adobe Reader (v6 or above) and it should load correctly (see below on video).

Problem: The Gamerzine loads, and I can see the text, images and multimedia, but the video does not play. (Mac)
Solution: The video is compressed in WMV format, as it was the only solution that offered adequate quality vs compression. Unfortunately, WMV is a Windows format and does not play on Macs. It is the only section of the Gamerzines that does not work on a Mac, and we are looking into providing a different video stream within the PDF for Macs.

Other problems

Problem: I cannot get the magazine to download in FireFox.
Solution: Check to see if you have an add-on called PDF Download installed. If you do, ensure you are upgraded to the latest version and then use the Bypass option to ensure it does not operate on the GamerZines.com site. This is because PDF Download attempts to do exactly what our site is already doing via a different script and ensuring that the PDF magazines are downloaded and not opened inline within the browser. We set our magazines to download in this manner so that more screen space can be given over to the pages so you can read them in the best way, and so that you do not have to re-download the magazine if you want to re-open it.

Problem: I subscribed to your magazine newsletters, but I have never received an email to tell me a new issue is out.
Solution: Are you using a free online webmail service like Hotmail, Yahoo, GMail or AOL? All of these services run spam filters that are, by their own admission, less than perfect. They all advise that you add any newsletter sending addresses to your "whitelist" (also known as Safe List or Address Book). If you take a look in your Junk Mail box, you may find issues of the newsletter or even the confirmation link. To quote Hotmail's own help file on its Junk Mail filter: "Note: At Enhanced and Exclusive levels, wanted messages are occasionally identified as junk e-mail. Check your junk e-mail folder regularly to make sure wanted e-mail has not been moved there." Add This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it to your Safe List and the emails will be delivered bypassing the filter in the future.

Problem: Your email arrives with the subject "SPAM: SPF record does not match" or similar.
Solution: Yes, this is one of the problems with the Sender Policy Framework (SPF) - email services that use types of forwarding break the policy and the server then incorrectly thinks that the SPF record doesn't match. SPF is a method that allows email servers to identify email as originating from the server which is authenticated to send email for that domain - see OpenSPF for more info. We implemented it as it is a requirement for delivery of newsletters to Hotmail and MSN, and it does offer some security against spam for recipients, but it does mean accepting this limitation. The solution is to add This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it to your spam filter's whitelist.

If these don't solve your problem, or you have encountered something not covered on this page, please contact us with details via the Feedback page and we will do our best to help you.