Why are my feed updates or media downloads failing?

Feed update failures and download failure usually have different causes but you can use the same approach to do some general diagnosis on either.

You can also see all failures by pressing on 'Application Log' in the menu on the feeds screen. This will list all of the successes and failures for feed updates and downloads. Pressing on a row in the list will display the details of the failure.

Alternatively, you can press on the 'details' link on the feed (if it's a feed update problem) or on the item (if it's a download problem).

In the details, there are two parts to pay attention to:

1 - Details - this is the error message and will usually give a good indication of what the problem is
2 - Cause - this is DoggCatcher's guess at what the error was caused by based on past errors.

Common error messages

Illegal character in hostname at index...
The feed or media files are stored on a server with a hostname that is not allowed by the Android networking software.

Task killers
Some users have reported that task killers are killing DC and causing updates/downloads to fail.

Getting help

If you are unable to resolve the issue, please post in the support forum. Please include the RSS URL and a detailed description of what you are experiencing.