Here are some of the answers to the most common issues with the webcams. If you are experiencing something different, please feel free to let us know and we will be happy to try and track down the cause for you. It might be something on your computer that needs tweaked or it might be something happening here that we don't know about. Most likely if there is something preventing the webcams from functioning we do know about them, but not always.

The webcam image is all black and it appears to have stopped taking an image in the middle of the night!
Most likely there was a software update that downloaded overnight and the server here in the IT office needs to be reset. We generally get to this first thing in the morning and it's an easy fix. If it happens on the weekend, it probably won't get attention until we are back at work on Monday.

Sometimes there is a problem in the Washington DC office that stops the images from updating. Generally a "Page Not Found" error or some other message will show up in those cases. If you get a "Page Not Found" it's a good indication that the problem is back east.

I see most of the cams but the one I want only has a broken image symbol - a box with a red X on a PC or a blue box with a white ? on a Mac.
Most likely one of the images has only partially downloaded. Wait about 5 or 10 minutes and try to reload or refreash the cam. That almost always works. You can also try to delete your cache if you wish. A clean cache is a happy cache!

The Many Glacier Cam is missing; it's my favorite!
Back in November something changed in the Department of the Interior security world and we were no longer able to get our cams that worked on modems to authenticate their passwords and pass the images through the internet. The fix for Lake McDonald was to move it to it's new location so that it could be directly on the park network. There is no good solution like that for Many Glacier. The nearest network connection is at the Ranger Station and we have explored all the potential views from there and there are too many trees to be able to see anything of the surrounding landscape. Those pesky forests are always in the way! We continue to explore new ways to provide service at Many and have not given up, it's just the for the time being we don't have a solution.

AND....My all time favorite webcam problem report!
We received an email from someone that complained that every time he checked the webcams all he saw was a big black square. I thought of the server being down, but that was not it. I tried to figure out what on his computer would cause that and couldn't think of anything. It took me a day but I finally figured it out. I wrote back and asked if he was always checking them at night! He replied with a simple one word answer..."Duh!"

Sometimes the easy answer is the correct one!
:-)

If there is something else going on and you think we should know about it or might be able to help you can always e-mail us