Mountain Lion Help Center not working

Mountain Lion Help Center works when on my iMac when I connected to the internet by cable in town. It does NOT work when connected to the internet at home (rural) by direct-to satellite or by Wi-Fi (to tower). Apple says this is an internet service provider problem - actually is a big problem for me. I wonder how common this is for those with rural connections and what can be done to fix it?

Rural connections are what they are. Some folks enjoy better connectivity via satellite than others. What are you paying for the connection? It might be less expensive to use something like NetZero if available in your area.

No NetZero here. I have a 'G4' satellite conection with a '3MPS' speed. it should work. Thanks for your interest.

Take it you are from Victor Harbour S.A.?

The Telstra G4 network is primarily aimed at the mobile phone market. When demand for phone connections is heavy, the broadband capacity declines. Same problem for me and you can see my rural locality.

Just had to accept ADSL 2+ with a 9MB/s download capacity, compared to city folks 24MB/s download rate. Roll on the NBN.

Hi Harry,
To get that kind of download speed (9Mps), I would have to pay a small fortune a month. I already pay $67+ Cdn
The fault is partly Apple's - while should the Help Centre (center, for Americans) be so demanding of speed that it won't function for many rural customers?
You said, 'Take it you are from Victor Harbour S.A.?' I'm on the other side of the orb - Victoria Harbour Ontario, Canada.

I highly doubt this is an issue of limited bandwidth as the content just isn't that rich and should work fine under even the slowest of connections.

When you say that "Help Centre" doesn't work, what specifically happens when you try to launch it?

Does your ISP require any special client configuration like PPPoE, proxy settings or any other manual TCP/IP configuration?

Just a note, it's all working here. Wish I could help more but can't duplicate it here. Will try the Macbook later.

cwa107 said:

I highly doubt this is an issue of limited bandwidth as the content just isn't that rich and should work fine under even the slowest of connections.

When you say that "Help Centre" doesn't work, what specifically happens when you try to launch it?

Does your ISP require any special client configuration like PPPoE, proxy settings or any other manual TCP/IP configuration?

Click to expand...

1) I go to 'Help' on any Apple ML application.
2) I click, for instance, 'Safari Help' and a screen appears, listing live links to specific topics. 3) When I click on any of the topics a message always appears: "The selected topic is currently unavailable...........". I Grabbed a screenshot of the whole message but I'm not sure how to post the .tiff to this post.
Otherwise, my internet browsing is fast and problem free.
My ISP uses DHCP (whatever that is) but no special configurations.
I wonder where the Help Center software is connecting and if it uses any ports or has certain bandwidth requirements?

Thanks for your interest!

K from VicHarb said:

1) I go to 'Help' on any Apple ML application.
2) I click, for instance, 'Safari Help' and a screen appears, listing live links to specific topics. 3) When I click on any of the topics a message always appears: "The selected topic is currently unavailable...........". I Grabbed a screenshot of the whole message but I'm not sure how to post the .tiff to this post.
Otherwise, my internet browsing is fast and problem free.
My ISP uses DHCP (whatever that is) but no special configurations.
I wonder where the Help Center software is connecting and if it uses any ports or has certain bandwidth requirements?

Thanks for your interest!

Click to expand...

I don't need a picture, I think I have a pretty good idea based on your description.

Without getting technical, DHCP basically means automatic configuration, which is a good thing. Now, I'm not all that familiar with Satellite ISPs, but I know that at least at one time, a dial-up line was required for upload, while all downloads came through the dish. I believe that it's now possible to do 2-way communication, is that what you have, or is their a phone line going to your modem? Also, do you use a wireless router of some sort?

My guess is that you have a DNS issue. Basically when your computer asks for a friendly address, like "http://www.yahoo.com", DNS is the service that translates the name over to machine-friendly IP addresses. It's possible to bypass the ISP's DNS servers, but I want to get a better picture of your connection/home network before I make specific recommendations.

No phone line is connected. The dish & modem do 2-way communication. I have Airport Extreme about a metre (3') from my Mac. However, I had the same problem when I bypassed the Airport and connected directly to the modem by ethernet cable.

K from VicHarb said:

No phone line is connected. The dish & modem do 2-way communication. I have Airport Extreme about a metre (3') from my Mac. However, I had the same problem when I bypassed the Airport and connected directly to the modem by ethernet cable.

Click to expand...

OK, good deal.

Here's something to try on the Mac:

1. Open System Preferences and go to Network
2. Choose the network adapter you're using to connect (I'm assuming WiFi if you're using the AirPort Extreme).
3. Click the Advanced button
4. Click the DNS tab
5. Under DNS servers, click the Add (+) button
6. Add 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 (these are Google's free public DNS servers - if you're wary of Google, we can try a different DNS service, but let's just use these for now - we can undo it later if it doesn't work)
7. Click OK
8. Click Apply and close System Preferences

Now, try Help Centre once again (you should not need to reboot). If it works, the problem is likely with your ISP.

If you want to revert, go through the same process, but use the minus (-) button to remove the addresses you entered. System Preferences should revert to the DHCP-supplied DNS server name (likely 192.168.1.1, which is your AirPort Extreme acting as a relay to your ISP's DNS servers).

If you don't want to use Google's DNS, you can also try OpenDNS, but this requires signing up with an account. Once you have an account, you will enter the DNS server addresses in the same manner as described above.

I went through the steps twice, to be sure, but the result was the same.
The DNS setting reverted to 10.0.1 (in grey) when I switch out of the Google DNS

K from VicHarb said:

I went through the steps twice, to be sure, but the result was the same.
The DNS setting reverted to 10.0.1 (in grey) when I switch out of the Google DNS

Click to expand...

Ok, that IP is fine... apple just uses a different private IP range than other router manufacturers, and that's perfectly OK and has no bearing on this whatsoever.

Have you tried cold booting the modem (i.e. pulling the power cord, letting it sit off for 30 seconds and then plugging it back in)?

cwa107 said:

Ok, that IP is fine... apple just uses a different private IP range than other router manufacturers, and that's perfectly OK and has no bearing on this whatsoever.

Have you tried cold booting the modem (i.e. pulling the power cord, letting it sit off for 30 seconds and then plugging it back in)?

Click to expand...

I have not cold booted the modem in several days. I will re-set the DNS to the Google codes, reboot the modem and try again.

It takes the modem several minutes to reset but, unfortunately the problem remains. I can browse with the new DNS server, but still not access the help files.

Hi CWA 107,
This is a line I copied from 'Console' that I think relates to the problem.
However, its meaning is 'way beyond me. 2012-08-05 9:58:19.551 PM HelpViewer[470]: : event.layerX and event.layerY are broken and deprecated in WebKit. They will be removed from the engine in the near future. (line: 0)

OK. I don't really have a next step for you at this point - I'm still noodling on it.

As to the log entry, I'm also having difficulty inferring the meaning. By 'deprecated', I think they mean that a certain call made to the WebKit API is obsolete and/or replaced. Whether that's a function of poor programming on the part of the Help Centre engine, or just a WebKit failure writing a suitable log entry to describe the nature of the error, I'm not sure.

Here's an article I stumbled upon. It's primarily focused on the OS (and I still think this is something related to your ISP), but still something to take a look at and see if any of the suggestions help...

Troubleshooting Help Viewer

Thanks,caw 107,
I will read the article soon (after breakfast) and I will keep you posted. Thanks for your tenacity with this difficulty.
K

Thanks! I have read it through and by process of elimination, I think I need to focus on my ISP and their settings (ports, bandwidth requirements for Help Center). So far I can't even do a Ping on Help Center because the HC address is not shown.