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I know there has been a similar questions to this already but the solution did not work for me so here again:

I have internet connection and I can execute such commands like:

Import["http://www.google.com"]

I am also able to use the functionality of Wolfram Alpha such as

== GDP of the USA

but when I do

CountryData["France", "Population"]

it tells me that there is no connection and that I should test the connectivity which I did via "Edit->Preferences->Internet Connectivity->Test Connectivity". When I tried testing it it returned:

"PacletSiteUpdate::err: An error occurred attempting to update paclet information from site http://pacletserver.wolfram.com. Failed writing received data to disk/application"

When I tried to ping the pacletserver.wolfram.com directly in the cmd it tried to ping pacletserver2.wolfram.com which failed. When I did the same with pacletserver1.wolfram.com and pacletserver3.wolfram.com it worked just fine.

So I tried Nikita's Solution with the windows host file which did not work for me.

After that I tried to change the server address within Mathematica with

$PacletSite = pacletserver1.wolfram.com

After that the Connectivity Test returned success. The CountryData-function did still not work, though. When I re-started Mathematica the $PacletSite contains the original value (http://pacletserver.wolfram.com) and the Connectivity Test fails again.

Even though the CountryData-function did not work, I think that the problem is that Mathematica tries to connect to pacletserver2.wolfram.com and the $PacletSite-Value does not influence the CountryData-function.

So is there a way to change the way Mathematica tries to connect to the pacletserver and tell it only to connect to pacletserver1.wolfram.com or pacletserver3.wolfram.com?

Thank you very much for your help

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  • $\begingroup$ What version of Mathematica is this? $\endgroup$
    – Todd Gayley
    Jul 26, 2013 at 15:48
  • $\begingroup$ Mathematica 9.0.1 and I am using Windows 7 $\endgroup$
    – Tom
    Jul 27, 2013 at 20:14
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    $\begingroup$ In version 9, try setting PacletManager`Services`Private`$wriPacletServerIndex = "1" (note that the value is a string). Use "1" or "3", or whatever pacletserverN.wolfram.com value works for you. I might contact you separately to try to determine why the built-in failover mechanism doesn't appear to be working. $\endgroup$
    – Todd Gayley
    Jul 27, 2013 at 21:28
  • $\begingroup$ Unfortunatly it did not work. I thin that the built-in failover mechanism works beacuse the problem is just the http:// value. The original Value of $PacletSite is http://pacletserver.wolfram.com when I don't change that and set PacletManagerServicesPrivate$wriPacletServerIndex = "1"` the Connectivity Test fails. As soon as I set $PacletSite = pacletserver.wolfram.com even without PacletManagerServicesPrivate$wriPacletServerIndex = "1"` the Connectivity Test is successful. The CountryData-function still does not work, though. In addition the is default again after a re-start. $\endgroup$
    – Tom
    Jul 28, 2013 at 13:11
  • $\begingroup$ I have the same problem in a user account with non-ASCII characters in the name. Does your Windows user name have accents? Try CountryData["France", "Population"] in your administrator account. $\endgroup$
    – Hector
    Jul 31, 2013 at 13:15

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I had EXACTLY the same problem and the cause actually seemed to be a Windows user name with non-ASCII character. A simple change of the user name through control panel does not help though as the underlying user name remains the same. Creating a new account with only ASCII characters solved the problem for me.

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  • $\begingroup$ What's a "underlying user name"? Is there any evidence for its existence? I suspect the issue is not a user name with non-ASCII character, but some kind of unknown residuals. I faced very similar issue (even worse actually, I couldn't even call WolframAlpha or search words that are not function names) recently when updating v8 to v9, and I never used a non-ASCII user name. [Clean start](support.wolfram.com/kb/3274 ) doesn't work, but when I re-install my v9 in a new account, the problem resolved! $\endgroup$
    – xzczd
    Sep 20, 2014 at 5:13

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