Why am I getting an old webpage in Chrome?

September 29, 2008 2:12 PM

When I browse to Talking Points Memo with Chrome from work I see the page as of Sept 24th. At home, with Chrome, I see the page as of today. At work in IE7 I see the site correctly. No other websites are affected.

The entirity of the Talking Points Memo site looks like it comes from Sept 24th, not just the main page. This includes pages that I don't remember ever browsing to!

I tried clearing my chrome cache by going to clear browsing data and emptying the cache for all dates. This may be a bug in Chrome, but it seems more likely that the problem is between the keyboard and chair...

posted by Maastrictian to Technology (9 answers total)

The 24th was right around the time they migrated the site to new architecture so there may have been some DNS changes that Chrome or your computer are somehow caching. Do other computers at your office exhibit the same behavior?
posted by bizwank at 2:35 PM on September 29, 2008

You're definitely looking at two different sites. Bizwank is on the right track: it's a DNS issue where two computers are resolving to two different addresses.
posted by rokusan at 3:15 PM on September 29, 2008

Response by poster: But it works on my work computer under IE7. For instance, this link: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/220654.php

On Chrome I go to a TPM page that says "The file you are looking for has not been found."

On IE7 on the same computer I get a short post titled "Fire Alarm"

DNS should not treat two browsers on the same computer differently. Right?
posted by Maastrictian at 3:20 PM on September 29, 2008

Are there any differences between how Chrome and IE7 are configured? Is one using a proxy? Do you have any toolbars or addons installed on Chrome? Have you rebooted?
posted by bizwank at 3:30 PM on September 29, 2008

Do you have Chrome's "DNS prefetching" option turned on (it's enabled by default)? Type "about:dns" in your addressbar and look for an entry for TPM. What is the IP listed?
posted by bizwank at 3:39 PM on September 29, 2008

Best answer: This happened to me right before a presentation (different situation- different browsers). It definitely is a DNS issue although beyond my grasp, but I did the trusty old reboot and it fixed the situation.
posted by jeremias at 5:48 PM on September 29, 2008

Response by poster: Posting this question just as I was leaving work, not to return until this morning, was probably a bad idea.

Thanks to all for the help. I tried turning off chrome's DNS caching, but that did not help. TPM was dns cached, with a time of 330 hours (which is significantly before my Sept 24th horizon). There is no IP address listed on the about:dns page.
posted by Maastrictian at 7:40 AM on October 1, 2008

330 hours is pretty extreme, it's most likely got the old IP cached. So, you need to clear that cache somehow.
posted by bizwank at 12:29 PM on October 2, 2008

Response by poster: For what its worth, the issue resolved itself today. I don't belive I took any action that actually solved it...
posted by Maastrictian at 6:04 AM on October 20, 2008