Firefox doesn't want to talk to Google. Or the reverse. What?
November 4, 2022 7:41 PM Subscribe
I'm been having a strange issue with Firefox (but not Chrome) on and off for the last month or so. Sometimes- not all the time- Google services don't load. Search, YouTube, CAPTCHAs on other sites, Gmail. It acts like it's timing out, YouTube throws up a message ("You're offline. Check your connection."). I've tried my usual troubleshooting steps and the only thing that helps is turning on a VPN.
The Firefox console shows xhr requests failing with "Cors failed", "NS_ERROR_DOM_BAD_URI", "NS_ERROR_ABORT", and "NS_BINDING_ABORTED" but it seems to vary. It takes some seconds for those requests to actually fail.
It happens in Private Browsing mode (with no extensions enabled).
It happens in Troubleshooting Mode.
It happens in a brand new Firefox Portable.
Setting my DNS server (on Windows) to 8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4 has not seemed to help. ipconfig /flushdns has not helped. Restarting my hardware (PC and router) has not helped.
Turning on a VPN did help. It never happens when I have a VPN on. It doesn't happen in Chrome. I've reached the outer limits of my usual ability to troubleshoot. What could possibly be causing this? How can I fix this?
The Firefox console shows xhr requests failing with "Cors failed", "NS_ERROR_DOM_BAD_URI", "NS_ERROR_ABORT", and "NS_BINDING_ABORTED" but it seems to vary. It takes some seconds for those requests to actually fail.
It happens in Private Browsing mode (with no extensions enabled).
It happens in Troubleshooting Mode.
It happens in a brand new Firefox Portable.
Setting my DNS server (on Windows) to 8.8.8.8 / 8.8.4.4 has not seemed to help. ipconfig /flushdns has not helped. Restarting my hardware (PC and router) has not helped.
Turning on a VPN did help. It never happens when I have a VPN on. It doesn't happen in Chrome. I've reached the outer limits of my usual ability to troubleshoot. What could possibly be causing this? How can I fix this?
Try toggling 'offline mode' on and off again, on the file menu.
posted by Lanark at 6:44 AM on November 5, 2022
posted by Lanark at 6:44 AM on November 5, 2022
FWIW, I use Firefox only and don't see this problem.
Network problem? It's always DNS ;-). My first guess here is DNS over HTTPS may be failing; try changing those settings.
Less likely to be your problem, but in the past I've had Google-only problems that boiled down to QUIC, the HTTP alternative protocol. Google uses a lot more QUIC than other sites. That's less true now though, QUIC is pretty standard and used widely. (In my case I used to have a router rule that deprioritized unknown UDP protocols, and it didn't know about QUIC. 100% my mistake.)
posted by Nelson at 8:03 AM on November 5, 2022
Network problem? It's always DNS ;-). My first guess here is DNS over HTTPS may be failing; try changing those settings.
Less likely to be your problem, but in the past I've had Google-only problems that boiled down to QUIC, the HTTP alternative protocol. Google uses a lot more QUIC than other sites. That's less true now though, QUIC is pretty standard and used widely. (In my case I used to have a router rule that deprioritized unknown UDP protocols, and it didn't know about QUIC. 100% my mistake.)
posted by Nelson at 8:03 AM on November 5, 2022
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Apart from Windows Defender, do you use any antivirus or other malware-protection or connection-scanning software?
posted by mhoye at 5:20 AM on November 5, 2022