Why is my GMail down all the time? What can I do about it?
September 25, 2008 11:34 AM   Subscribe

I've been using Gmail since it launched. In the past few months, I've been having LOTS of down time at times I know others are NOT having this problem. This is the page I see ALL THE TIME. Why am I so special? Is anyone else having this trouble? Is there any actual way to contact Google in a way that will get me a response? It's driving me NUTS!!
posted by abbyladybug to Computers & Internet (10 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I was getting a different persistent error (#700) over the past few days: switching to 'older version' in the top right options fixed it. If you can't log in with the new version to switch, try the instructions here. The newest version seems to have a few teething troubles.
posted by holgate at 11:45 AM on September 25, 2008 [1 favorite]


There is a contact link on this page which has information about your error.
If you continue to see this error over an extended period of time, please let us know so we can look into the issue.
posted by sanko at 12:00 PM on September 25, 2008


I had a similar problem a while back; clearing all my google cookies fixed it.
posted by dolface at 12:07 PM on September 25, 2008


Response by poster: OK, all cookies from forever cleared. Let's see what happens. I filled out an error report, although my experience hasn't been great with Google being directly responsible to specific queries. Fingers crossed.
posted by abbyladybug at 12:25 PM on September 25, 2008


I've had a lot of problems accessing from work where it seems to time out. I was able to fix it by using https instead of http in the address. I have no idea why that would make a difference, but you could try it.
posted by mattholomew at 12:36 PM on September 25, 2008


I first started using https://mail.google.com/ to get to Gmail a couple years ago when I read somewhere that this would prevent the flakiness I'd experienced when uploading attachments when logged on via http (unsecured). It did. I've used it as a matter of course ever since, basically because there's no reason not to. I also had a 502 within the last month (can't remember exactly when) but it went away within minutes.
posted by flabdablet at 5:10 PM on September 25, 2008


It's just occurred to me that my original difficulties with attachment uploading happened when I was using Gmail at work, behind a HTTP proxy. Seems to me that using a HTTPS connection ought to give proxies fewer opportunities to screw things up.
posted by flabdablet at 5:12 PM on September 25, 2008


Clearing the cache and cookies has helped me out for this sort of thing with Gmail before.
posted by pompomtom at 6:22 PM on September 25, 2008


Response by poster: OK. Check this out. I'm having this problem on the computer at the place where I work once a week. I have this problem on my Blackberry. There seems to be something going on with my account that is NOT going on with other accounts. This is a problem above and beyond cache-clearing. Any more ideas?
posted by abbyladybug at 9:50 AM on September 26, 2008


GMail is partitioned across tens of thousands of servers. I would guess you were left on a problematic one. Ask Google why your account is so unreliable, or make a new account and forward your old email to it.
posted by aye at 6:02 AM on September 28, 2008


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