Google Chrome Bad Request error 400 indicates the server could not understand or process the request sent by your browser.
What causes bad request errors on Chrome? Error 400 is a client error that occurs due to incorrect requests, invalid syntax, or routing issues. It can also occur if the URL is not recognized or you did not type it correctly. So, check again and make sure you typed the URL correctly.
In rare cases, bad request errors may also indicate there’s a server-side problem preventing the processing of your request. In this case, you can contact the website owner to check if they’re aware of this problem but only after you tried all the solutions listed in this guide.
How Do I Fix a 400 Bad Request Error?
1. Clear your browser cache
Clearing your Chrome cache and cookies can help you to fix bad request errors. As you visit different websites, your browser stores temporary files, and various scripts in order to load the respective websites faster next time.
But these files may clog up your browser or they might even become corrupted which translates into various browsing problems, including error 400.
To clear your Google Chrome cache and cookies:
- Click on the menu icon, go to History, click again on History
- Then select Clear browsing data
- Check all the three options available to delete your cache, cookies, and history
- Then select the time range and hit the Clear data button.
Restart your computer and check if you can now access the website that initially gave you error 400. If the bad request error persists, reboot your modem and router and try again.
2. Refresh your DNS
Chrome has its own internal DNS cache that you can clear by following these steps:
- Launch the browser and type chrome://net-internals/#dns in the address bar → press Enter
- Click on the Clear host cache button to refresh the DNS cache
- Go back to the address bar and type chrome://net-internals/#sockets
- Select Close idle sockets, and click Flush socket pools
Close the browser, open it again, and check if this solution worked.
Next, if you’re using Windows, you need to flush the DNS on your computer using Command Prompt:
- Click on the search bar and type cmd
- Right-click on Command Prompt and select Run as administrator → hit Enter
- Enter the ipconfig /flushdns command and press Enter to clear your computer’s DNS cache.
3. Disable your extensions
Some extensions may interfere too much with the way your browser works determining the servers to interpret your browser requests as incorrect or invalid.
We suggest disabling all your browser extensions to check if that solves the bad request errors you’re getting on Chrome.
Click on the menu icon, go to More tools, and select Extensions. Select each extension individually and turn them all off.
4. Additional solutions
- Use a different Chrome profile
- If you’re getting error 400 bad request only on particular websites, contact the website owner using the contact page and let them know about this problem.
- Use a different browser.
We hope one of these solutions has solved your problem.
Follow the above instructions. I was able to get rid of this error by opening a cmd window as administrator and entering this command:
ipconfig /flushdns
Then I disabled all browser extensions and the 400 error went away. One by one I enabled each browser extension hoping to learn which one could be the cause. That did not seem to matter. Am saving this solution as this is a pain in the butt when it happens. Now I know how to resolve it. Hope this helps!
Yes I ended up opening it in a completely different browser after all the other steps failed. Thanks for the advice.
Got so frustrated with it that I did a full reset of the PC. Nothing on it but windows 10 and edge. No modification, no add-ons, nothing. Same error. Confirmed not a server error or firewall issue as gmail works fine on other machines in the house. That being the case, it has to be that device or google. But why it would be that device on a fresh build, who knows?
Resolution: now using Outlook to open gmail. Works fine there.
Same problem using OPERA Browser !
I tried all the steps provided in this article to resolve the 400 error issue but unfortunately none of these have worked.
I noticed I started getting this error after having my gmail account open in one tab (still accessible at this time in my chrome browser) and then tried to access my wife’s gmail account in another tab.
I can access my gmail with other browsers but not with the chrome browser that I performed this operation in.
Could this be a cause to this issue?
Doesn’t work. I am sick of clearing cache/cookies, etc and still get the error message. The URLs work on other browsers o I’ve given up on Chrome
No, I didn’t. I’m trying to go in and manually clear my history and I always get an error 400 message.