All of a sudden, firefox could not connect

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
27,327
16,157
136
I have been using this session for weeks 24/7. I was replying to a thread, and it locked up. I tryed edge, and it worked. Then chrome and it worked, but even after a cold boot firefox will no longer connect to the forums, any forum. I get:

Secure Connection Failed

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.

The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
27,327
16,157
136
OK< maybe stupid question, but in win 10, how do I do that.? run cmd, then in the black terminal, type "firefox -p " ?? It says

'firefox' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

And why would this start happening right in the middle of a reply to a thread ?
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
27,327
16,157
136
ok, well, at least it launched, but it still has the same problem. How do I create a new profile ? I don't want to loose all my saved passwords for other web sites though.
 

Markfw

Moderator Emeritus, Elite Member
May 16, 2002
27,327
16,157
136
OK< somebody changed something, and it was not me. I just hit refresh, and now it all works again.
 

esquared

Forum Director & Omnipotent Overlord
Forum Director
Oct 8, 2000
25,198
6,270
146
The other day I couldn't connect.

Access Denied
You don't have permission to access "http://www.anandtech.com/" on this server.
Reference #18.ec32c517.1519768581.115557ec

I ran CCleaner to clear my cache and everything worked fine. First time I ever saw that error.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
21,200
16,423
136
ok, well, at least it launched, but it still has the same problem. How do I create a new profile ? I don't want to loose all my saved passwords for other web sites though.

When you run firefox -p from a run prompt, it will start the profile manager, which allows you to manage multiple profiles so you could test with one while leaving your main profile intact. This helps to narrow down whether the problem is profile-specific or something else.
 
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StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
6,754
10,749
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It is not a browser problem or profile problem. It seems to be a problem of the web server.

I have the same problem occasionally with Seamonkey and with MS IE 11. Here is one possible error message in Seamonkey:

0SWIuJW.png


On other occasions, the error message offers a button for inspection of the certificate. On using that button, it says that the certificate cannot be loaded, or something like that.

I tried restricting the browser to a subset of the usually enabled TLS 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, but this didn't help.

AFAIU the mentioned browsers' refusal to load the page is explained by this:
"Mozilla Restricts All New Firefox Features to HTTPS Only"
https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/firefox-57.2505924/page-4#post-39265307

But what is the server-side problem?
 

mrblotto

Golden Member
Jul 7, 2007
1,639
117
106
Been having this same problem ^ for around a year now, off and on........no idea what the deal is
 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,805
6,361
126
Haven't had this particular problem, but the latest update to ff 60 has given me a lot of weird performance issues.
 

Iron Woode

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 10, 1999
31,323
12,835
136
I just had this issue for the last 15 minutes.

makes no sense at all.
 

jsimenhoff

Administrator
Jun 27, 2016
353
120
126
Hey all, we're going to look into this. If it's any consolation I actually don't think it's an issue with the forums. I had the exact same issue with eBay earlier in the week, which makes me think it's a bug with Firefox rather than our site.
 

Iron Woode

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 10, 1999
31,323
12,835
136
Hey all, we're going to look into this. If it's any consolation I actually don't think it's an issue with the forums. I had the exact same issue with eBay earlier in the week, which makes me think it's a bug with Firefox rather than our site.
I concur. I am betting it's a Firefox issue.
 

StefanR5R

Elite Member
Dec 10, 2016
6,754
10,749
136
As I said, MS IE had a HTTPS verification problem at the same time. It is not exclusive to Firefox.