This hasn't always been the case - seemingly only after I get a premium account - whenever I try to access rapidshare.com to download something, i get the following error:

I've never ever had this problem before with rapidshare. It's only been recently and it only happens with rapidshare, and seemingly only after I've become a premium member.

How can I solve the problem?

Yeah , ive been getting exactly the same ...its nothing to do with becoming a premium member though as ive been one for a couple of years .....it most be a problem with one of rapidshares servers but im suprised there havent been more reports etc ....

I am wondering where your handshake has gone that would be a worry some thing. I'd run some tools to check out the syn,act,rst, this information has gone somewhere. Usually in a note like this a closing connection message is sent but not here and that to me is a problem.

Try using https://www.rapidshare.com/.../filename.rar.html instead of your normal link.

Thanks. Unfortunately that doesn't work, but it's a poor service on rapidshare's part - I shouldn't have to do that in order to download a file.

Also, I bet you're with BT like me

Yeah mate, with BT lol... BT total Broadband Option 3 : (

It's BT, not RS. They're apparently blocking the site when their servers are busy (i.e. all day & evening).

The method above does work if you have a Premium Account at RS, but it does take ages to load the page.

You have to login to RS, then go back to the page.
Then, once you get to the page to choose the server you can use these direct links in your download manager.

Very manual and time consuming though, and I have myself found a few files it doesn't work for.