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What causes 502 bad gateway message ?

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by Mike109

Mike109
Mike109
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One day the weatherbug website started giving me a “502 Bad Gateway” message. This started happening about the time that I updated Firefox. I can’t say for sure about the exact timeline because I don’t go to that website everyday, but thought I’d mention it in case this was a common problem.

I only reboot the PC about once a week, and my wireless Chromebook worked OK accessing weatherbug.

The first thing I did was to clear Firefox’s cache & cookies. That let weatherbug’s first page load, but I could not navigate, & clicking on its different options just gave a spinning circle. Closing & reopening Firefox gave the 502 Bad Gateway message again. IOW clearing cache & cookies was good for a one time only first page load of weatherbug. All following attempts gave the 502 message.

I rebooted the modem & router but that made no difference. I didn’t expect it to because the Chromebook worked, but I figured why not give it a try anyway.

I then rebooted the PC and that solved the problem.

But I’m curious, what could have been “stuck” in Firefox that might have caused this problem?

Is there something that I could have done to Firefox to fix the problem, instead of rebooting the PC?

One day the weatherbug website started giving me a “502 Bad Gateway” message. This started happening about the time that I updated Firefox. I can’t say for sure about the exact timeline because I don’t go to that website everyday, but thought I’d mention it in case this was a common problem. I only reboot the PC about once a week, and my wireless Chromebook worked OK accessing weatherbug. The first thing I did was to clear Firefox’s cache & cookies. That let weatherbug’s first page load, but I could not navigate, & clicking on its different options just gave a spinning circle. Closing & reopening Firefox gave the 502 Bad Gateway message again. IOW clearing cache & cookies was good for a one time only first page load of weatherbug. All following attempts gave the 502 message. I rebooted the modem & router but that made no difference. I didn’t expect it to because the Chromebook worked, but I figured why not give it a try anyway. I then rebooted the PC and that solved the problem. But I’m curious, what could have been “stuck” in Firefox that might have caused this problem? Is there something that I could have done to Firefox to fix the problem, instead of rebooting the PC?

All Replies (2)

Wesley Branton
Wesley Branton
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The 502 error code is often an issue that's not related to your end at all. It's an issue on the website's end. See 502 Bad Gateway Error for more information.

There are some cases where it can be an issue on your end and there are some steps in the attached article that you can try if you encounter the issue. But the majority of the time, it's a temporary issue outside of your control.

Mike109
Mike109 Question owner
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The problem existed with 2 different Firefox profiles. I was hoping it would be temporary but it lasted for several days. Then I tried the Chromebook & it worked, so I figured the problem had to be on the Windows PC.

I also did one of those "is it down or is it me" checks and the site was supposedly up & working. When I did reboot the PC it fixed the problem.

Sometimes I have a lot of documents open & it's a pain to save & remember what I was doing between them. Something similar, or maybe even the same error, happened before. So it would be nice to know what is fixed by rebooting & hopefully just go in correct the problem directly.