The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

400 Bad request

rossnroller's picture
rossnroller

400 Bad request

One for the tech-savvy folks out there. Sometimes, although not every time, when I click on a post title and bring up the post, immediately underneath it is the following notice:

400 Bad request
Your browser sent an invalid request.

I'm using Firefox and have googled for a solution. Seems cookies are the culprits, but the remedies recommended (clearing site cookies, or whatever) have not worked. Does anyone have an explanation, please, as to why I keep getting this notice, and more importantly, how to fix whatever is amiss? I'm able to read everything, so it's not a major issue - just a little irritating.

Cheers
Ross

PS: Now the same notice is coming up in the header, next to "The Fresh Loaf" title. It seems to be replacing the AdChoices (not so upset about that, heh heh)

Chuck's picture
Chuck

Which sites does the "400" happen on, or does it only happen on TFL? Also, when did it start happening?

"400" is a pretty general error message meaning only that "something" (no idea exactly what:-) sent by your browser didn't entirely make sense by the time it got to the website. Since "garbled" messages are generally already discarded by the time the website sees anything, the messages not entirely making sense usually means they either arrive out of order or don't follow the expected sequence, or perhaps are repeated many times.

One possibility, as you've noted, is the various "preferences" stored in the different cookies don't make sense when they're all invoked at the very same time. Despite what others say, my personal recommendation is to not delete all cookies; it's an awfully drastic thing to do, and it will mess up all the automatic signins and so forth you've established with other sites - there should be some way in your browser to delete cookies only for one site, such as "thefreshloaf.com".

A more likely possibility (but unfortunately harder to diagnose and harder to fix) is lots of your browser's network traffic is being badly garbled, so what's left appears to either arrive out of sequence or not make good sense. The most likely cause is some sort of interference with wireless networking (a neighbor on the same channel, a baby monitor, a piece of old equipment such as a refrigerator starting and stopping, etc.).

The next most likely cause is trying to "push" the distance limits too far (for example only one wireless router, on the main floor, but your computer in the basement at the other end of the house). Can you try changing your wireless networking to a different channel (it usually only makes sense to use 1, 6, or 11; just ignore all the rest).

A fourth (and even less likely) possibility is you have a very fast computer that's sending network traffic faster than your slower line to your ISP can handle it. This can usually be taken care of by following your ISP's directions to "tune" your network down to the slower speed. Unfortunately I don't know of any easy way to diagnose it.

rossnroller's picture
rossnroller

Here is some more info in response to your post:

It only happens on TFL as far as I've observed (which might not be far enough!), and I first noticed it about 2 days ago.

I have deleted cookies just for TFL. That was one of the recommendations I got via Google.

We are not on wireless. We have two computers running off a 4 port ADSL2+ Billion router.

I have recently upgraded to a new computer and although it's not gamer-fast I think it does have pretty good specs and quality components.

Dunno if any of this helps identify the likely problem?

Cheers
Ross

Chuck's picture
Chuck

Maybe Floyd can shed more light. The more information you can give him the better, hence these additional questions to prompt you--

 

Since you have two computers, can you try viewing the same parts of TFL with your other computer, and see if it complains "400" too?

Can you go to some other site for quite a while and verify for sure that the "400"s really only happen on TFL?

 

Do I understand correctly that you already had your newer/faster computer for several days or weeks before first noticing the "400"s (so it's reasonable to conclude the newer/faster computer is probably not a suspect)?

Do I understand correctly that "deleting cookies" didn't change the behavior (so although that sometimes works, it's reasonable to conclude cookies are irrelevant to this particular case)?

 

And something I forgot to ask earlier: what browser are you using (brand and version, generally available by pulling down "Help" from the bar at the top then selecting "About..."from that menu). And could there have been a change of either browsers or browser settings about the time you first noticed the "400"s?

Something else I should have asked because I'm not quite clear: Does the "400" message appear a) in place of the desired page, or b) in place of some of the pictures on the page, or c) in a separate popup error message box? And exactly how do the "400"s go away: Does the page or the picture or whatever nevertheless appear a) automatically right away just a few seconds later, or b) only after you click some sort of "OK" button and wait a few more seconds, or c) only after you click the browser's "recirc"/"recycle" button (often it's a picture of two round arrows pointed at each other's tails)?