Issues With Rapidshare? Try these Workarounds

[IAmNotAUser]

Workarounds for Sky customers unable to access filesharing sites
(and may probably be able to help you if there's other types too)

So, what's up?
For some reason, it appears that Sky users are again unable to access certain webpages, for an unknown reason. It seems to be affecting mainly filesharing sites but others are reported to be affected too. The common symptom is the webbrowser going to a HTTP 500 - Internal Server Error page, a page sitting on connecting for a long time, reporting a page as done without actually loading it, or a download manager waiting forever for a connection.

What's affected?
The list of sites currently includes, but is not limited to:
Filesharing sites

www.Rapidshare.com
www.Rapidshare.de
www.Megaupload.com
www.Hotfile.com
www.2Shared.com
www.Depositfiles.com
www.Sharingmatrix.com
www.Turbobit.net
www.Hotshare.net
www.Filesurf.ru
www.Uploading.com
www.Zshare.net
www.Megavideo.com
www.Multiupload.com

Non-Filesharing sites

Ultimate Battle Story - Home - from rexon91

All of the above have been tested by me at the time of writing (22:16 18/3/2010) and do not load

The following are reported as previously inaccessible but working for me at time of writing:

Speedtest.net
Sendspace.com

How can I get round it?
The SSL Trick - RS and Hotfile
Firstly for Rapidshare, you should be able to access the webpage by simply substituting the beginning of web address from http:// to https://. This connects you on the SSL secure connection, rather than the regular one and so effectively your link would instead become:

https://www.rapidshare.com/yourfile

or

https://www.hotfile.com/yourfile

So far, this does not seem to be able to work with Megaupload, and I don't believe it has been tested on any others as of yet either. If you do test, please respond to the thread stating your results.

The IP Trick - Working on RS and MU
Alternatively, it seems possible for the site to be accessed via the direct IP address of the servers, cutting out the DNS servers.
So far the tried and tested ones are 195.122.131.46 for Rapidshare.com and 209.222.148.136 for Megaupload.com.
So a rapidshare link would become

http://195.122.131.46/filename

and a Megaupload link would be

http://209.222.148.136/filename

The following are the IP Addresses to the other filesharing sites in the above list for you to try with the IP trick.
They have not yet been tested, so if you try them, please state here whether they worked for you or not.

www.Hotfile.com - 74.120.8.75
www.2Shared.com - 208.43.81.133
www.Depositfiles.com - 80.208.23.35
www.Sharingmatrix.com - 85.17.226.209
www.Turbobit.net - 188.72.243.99
www.Hotshare.net - 64.20.51.114
www.Filesurf.ru - 87.249.29.19
www.Uploading.com - 88.85.70.9

This trick does not appear to work with Zshare or Multiupload.

The Host File Trick - Working on RS and MU
If you use an auto-downloader, such as FlashGet, JDownloader on DownThemAll! this may help you.
Open up the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts file and at the bottom, add each of these lines that applies to you.

195.122.131.46 rapidshare.com
209.222.148.136 megaupload.com

Now when you visit

http://www.rapidshare.com/filename

it should work for you straight away

If you use an autodownloader with megaupload, you may need to remove the beginning "www." from the start of each of the links. This is easily done using notepad.
Go to Edit->Replace... and in the new window, type "www." into the Find What: box, and leave the Replace With: box blank, then put these new links into your autodownloader and the files should then work.

Here is the repeated untestedlist for use with Host File trick adjusted for direct copying into the host file.
Again, please confirm whether these do or do not work if you try them, so you can help others.

74.120.8.75 Hotfile.com
208.43.81.133 2Shared.com
80.208.23.35 Depositfiles.com
85.17.226.209 Sharingmatrix.com
188.72.243.99 Turbobit.net
64.20.51.114 Hotshare.net
87.249.29.19 Filesurf.ru
88.85.70.9 Uploading.com

Credits
This is merely a collation of other helpful tips and tricks through this thread, and others that NewsreadeR helpfully quoted near the beginning of the thread. I have verified as much information as I can, but take no credit for the original tips.
Thanks to NewsreadeR, invalid, stuie_y2k2, russ555, Man_hunt, Joe_UK, no1Joeno1 for supplying these tips and to Stewjames2000 for the notepad replace tip
(and apologies AND thanks to anyone else I missed while backtracking through this thread)

[NewsreadeR]

Thank you for doing this.

[liljak]

Awesome man +Thanks.

Any way round

http://www.zshare.net

Tried getting ip and using it but failed any ideas?

Thanks

[IAmNotAUser]

Awesome man +Thanks.

Any way round

http://www.zshare.net

Tried getting ip and using it but failed any ideas?

Thanks

Nope, sorry. Tried the methods myself and got no result either
I'll update the list now with it.

EDIT: On an impulse, tried Megavideo too, and that doesn't work either.

[Marilyn]

Why have they banned all these sites? I thought it wasn't just a coincidence when I 'suddenly' couldn't access any of these sites.
Are they going to ban every site of this type? The "https" trick also works on hotfile.com; it may indeed work on others...

Thanks.

[IAmNotAUser]

It depends who's done the banning, but that's been discussed quite a bit in this thread here: http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-b...share-com.html and I'd say this thread was more devoted to workarounds and tricks people can use to access these sites, more than the ins and outs of what's occurred.

However, thanks for the hotfile confirmation, updated the post.

[Marilyn]

It depends who's done the banning, but that's been discussed quite a bit in this thread here: http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-b...share-com.html and I'd say this thread was more devoted to workarounds and tricks people can use to access these sites, more than the ins and outs of what's occurred.

However, thanks for the hotfile confirmation, updated the post.

Thanks for the response. Anyone know of any way of accessing "http://www.multiupload.com"?
So using the hosts' trick will mean that I won't need to manually enter the ip address to acess the coressponding sites, no?

[liljak]

Should we be cautious of what we download while using the host file walkaround winkwink

Also you need elevated privliages to edit Host file.

[IAmNotAUser]

Thanks for the response. Anyone know of any way of accessing "http://www.multiupload.com"?
So using the hosts' trick will mean that I won't need to manually enter the ip address to acess the coressponding sites, no?

Another one added to the list, even though I did check that one.
No, I can't see any method atm to get onto multiupload, sorry.

And yes, Marilyn, the hosts trick will always replace that word with that ip address when trying to access the site.

Should we be cautious of what we download while using the host file walkaround winkwink

Also you need elevated privliages to edit Host file.

No more so than usual

Oh, yes. I forgot that part, thanks!

[dsl_traffic_jam]

Seems like easynet is filtering again.

Are easynet starting to block access to file hosting sites? :: UK Online :: think broadband

Anyway, try a web proxy server.