Gmail login problem - slow loading blank pages!

October 26, 2006 2:36 AM

GMail login problem - It's taking forever to login and I usually just get a blank screen at "https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth"

When my GMail session expires (every two weeks), I get chucked out and have to log in again. That's fine. What's not so good it that logging back in never works straight away. I get very slow loading pages, which mostly turn out to be blank.

The only way I've found to get even the login page under these circumstances is to use the HTML version (http://mail.google.com/mail/h), but then subsequent logins give me a blank page at https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth

The "Back" button and many retries of the login (this morning, 6 attempts) eventually gets me in.

I've scoured the usual sources, and tried the suggestions: clearing cache and cookies, using the https://mail.google.com/mail page instead of http://mail.google.com/mail and various other URLs that the forums suggest.

This has happened consistently for the last 3 months, on Firefox (Linux and Mac), Safari and Camino, and on the Nokia 770's browser.

posted by ciaron to computers & internet (7 comments total)

Sounds like an issue with your account rather than what you're using to access it. First off I'd recommend you use something like Thunderbird to download and archive all your mail, might take a while, but you don't want to be left without any of your mail if your account takes a nose dive.

Then, I'd get in touch with Google and ask them if there's an issue with your account.
posted by Happy Dave at 4:17 AM on October 26, 2006

It doesn't sound like an account issue at all to me, because the screen that's slow to load is the one that lets you tell Google which account to use in the first place. It sounds like a network issue. Who is your ISP? Does your ISP use a proxy for Web access? If so, can you turn it off? Are you perhaps on a very slow dialup connection? Do you have trouble with other websites timing out?

When this kind of crap happens to me, the first thing I reach for is Ethereal. It really helps to be able to see what packets are being sent to who, and how long it takes to get something back.
posted by flabdablet at 5:21 AM on October 26, 2006

flabdablet: I'm on a home DSL line and other sites are fine. Just Gmail. The ISP is Arcor (I'm in Germany), and there's no proxy in the way.

I'm no network guru (time to learn Ethereal?), but could the Google timeout be shorter than regular sites? Something with accessing Gmail from Germany? The lack of reports of similar problems around the 'net suggests it is something to do with my particular circumstances...
posted by ciaron at 5:46 AM on October 26, 2006

i was having this problem at work but not home, google has a page on the problem here. clearing my cache (as it suggests) solved the problem.
posted by noloveforned at 5:49 AM on October 26, 2006

Installing Ethereal is your first step on the road to network gurudom. Just compare what happens when you browse to http://mail.google.com/ to what happens when you browse to somewhere else.

Something else you could try: save the Gmail login screen on your own computer, and use that via a file:// URL when you want to log on to Gmail. Here's one I just made, by saving the Gmail login screen from Firefox, then using Nvu to make the login form's POST target absolute. It works for me; maybe it will work for you.
posted by flabdablet at 7:39 AM on October 26, 2006

Ethereal sounds like overkill, IMHO.

Have you tried refreshing? I get a blank "Loading" page once in a blue moon, and hitting "Refresh" once has always solved it.
posted by fogster at 8:42 AM on October 26, 2006

Seconding fogster. This happens to me sometimes, and refreshing usually fixes it.
posted by Penks at 9:25 AM on October 26, 2006