"Net Timeout" Error Loading Mefi in Firefox -- IE Fine

October 27, 2005 8:33 PM

I can't load metafilter in Firefox. Internet Explorer loads it fine. Non-tabbed browsing is killing me. Help! (more inside)
posted by davey_darling to MetaFilter-Related at 8:33 PM (13 comments total)

When I try to open www.metafilter.com, I end up with a "Net Timeout Error". Every other site (in the world?) works for me in Firefox. I literally thought the mefi disappeared off of the face of the earth for over two months, and spent a bit of time scouring message boards and awholelottanothing trying to figure out why.

IE loads it fine.

Has this ever happened to anyone else?

Any tips as to what I should do here?
posted by davey_darling at 8:36 PM on October 27, 2005

Deleting cookies usually fixes this type of problem.
posted by dg at 8:53 PM on October 27, 2005

Make sure you're really loading "metafilter.com" and not some typo domain that got saved in your URL history. Easiest way: copy-n-paste the URL from IE to Firefox.
I've been bitten by this bug before when trying to go to metafliter.com
posted by todbot at 9:26 PM on October 27, 2005

Use Opera?
posted by nightchrome at 12:11 AM on October 28, 2005

Use Maxthon. IE rendering engine, but with tabs and about a million other good things.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:13 AM on October 28, 2005

You could try the 1.5 beta. It's been more stable that the current release for me.
posted by jeblis at 1:26 AM on October 28, 2005

jeblis, me too (though I haven't had any problems such as davey describes), but I think the thing is that there are security problems with 1.5 that are addressed in the current release. (Otherwise I would go back).
posted by taz at 3:04 AM on October 28, 2005

Can I tag something on here? I cannot friggin' log into Askme when I'm on Firefox (1.07). I can log in with IE fine, anyone else with this problem?
posted by marxchivist at 4:11 AM on October 28, 2005

Hm. What do you mean by "log in", though? If you are normally logged in to MeFi, is there anything different when you go to askme? Like if you are on this page, or the front page in normal "logged-in" mode, and you click though to askme, do you find yourself not logged in somehow?

One thing to be aware of is that if you are following an outside link to askme, or anywhere else on the site, there's a good chance that you will be viewing it in a "un-logged-in" state. (Or at least that happens to me all the time.)
posted by taz at 4:35 AM on October 28, 2005

This rings a bell. I was having this problem with an earlier version of Firefox on Windows; I wiped it and reinstalled a few times, and the problem went away.

I know there are some legacy issues with the Necko engine that manifest in odd ways. For example, they cause Thunderbird to lose the capability to retrieve or send mail after it's been running for a few hours. For some reason, these problems have never been completely fixed, though apparently a number of people know exactly where the problem is and how to fix it and it's been marked as a release-stopper since 1999....
posted by lodurr at 6:01 AM on October 28, 2005

What do you mean by "log in", though?

I'm logged in on Metafilter and Metatalk, open Askme in a new tab from the link on Mefi and I am shown as not being logged in on Askme, although still logged in for the rest of the site. I then try to log in on Askme and it won't let me, just returns me to the Askme page in my pathetic, logged-out state.
posted by marxchivist at 6:10 AM on October 28, 2005

yeah... really odd.
posted by taz at 4:03 PM on October 28, 2005

i had this problem a week or three back. turns out i had an old ip address defined in the hosts file. for some reason not everything was picking it up (so dns lookup at the command line gave a different answer). and presumably the actual dns switched over (could have been a month or two ago).

if both ie and firefox are on the same machine, this seems unlikely, but you might just try the numerical ip directly and see if that makes a difference (click here).
posted by andrew cooke at 6:39 PM on October 28, 2005