Well, it would be nice if I could answer all questions on the subject in this first message and then post a copy in the FAQ, but the problem is that I really don't have "sure-fire fixes." Brother Art Thieme has long been cookieless in Illinois, and this has been a source aof great dismay and consternation to many of us. I was trying to schedule a Midwest house call to fix his cookie this summer, but it didn't work out.

I've made only one house call in my 9-1/2 years at Mudcat, and I was totally successful in resetting Barry Finn's cookie in New Hampshire. I have much less luck talking people through cookie fixes online.

Part of the problem is that most of us tech geeks have never had cookie problems ourselves, so we have not been able to develop the necessary empathy to help non-geeks resolve their cookie problems. As far as I can see, cookie problems are almost always due to a corrupted cookie on the user's computer. They are almost never due to problems on Mudcat's computer.

My usual remedy is to tell the user to do this:

Go to http://www.mudcat.org/member/logout.cfm (logout) and delete your cookie. Do it a second time to delete all traces of a Mudcat cookie. Go to tools/options on your browser and clear the history and the cache of Internet files, so there are no old Mudcat pages on your computer that might interfere with getting new pages. Go to http://www.mudcat.org/Login.cfm (Login) and reset your cookie with user name and password.

Now, usually this works - but it hasn't worked for Art Thieme and many others, and this is a source of frustration to me. Can anybody help me refine instructions so they are both sure-fire and goof-proof?

-Joe-