Facebook doesn't load

billwill

Okay, so I've been having this problem for a while now and it's slowly been getting worse and worse.

Basically, whenever I attempt to navigate to Facebook, it simply doesn't load. The little circle in the URL bar spins forever and the screen stays completely white. After a while, it will say something like "webpage not available." I use Chrome, and I read that clearing browsing history might help, but it didn't. So I downloaded Firefox and I'm having the same issue.

I only have this issue when trying to load Facebook; no other website does this.

Thoughts/solutions?

Gaslight

This sounds similar to something I experienced a while back and asked for advice about here:

http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/134155/cant-access-one-site-on-one-computer

Short version: could be a DNS issue. Switch to Google's DNS and see if that fixes it.

PlushyCthulhu

Try seeing if you can access http://m.facebook.com/ (the mobile site). Also check your computer for malware if you haven't recently.

billwill

Thanks guys. I'll look into the DNS thingy that Gaslight suggested (though I have no idea what that means... have to do more reading on it).

The weird thing is, it will randomly work and then not work. Sometimes it won't work for a whole hour, then it will work fine, only to not be accessible for ten minutes or so. No discernible pattern.

skeldare

I'd see if it's possible to do a ping and tracert to facebook.com.

One might also check your hosts file. It's possible that it somehow got modified or hijacked. It's usually located in C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc though it depends on your OS. You might even try deleting or renaming the file and see if that helps.

Delzhand

Note that if you want to edit your hosts file, you'll have to run notepad in administrator mode, then find the file from there (and you'll have to change the file options to show all or *.* instead of *.txt).