How to Fix the “400 Bad Request” error message from a website

Problem:

Whenever you access any website from a specific domain. For example http://www.abc.com/morepages/….

In the URL above, the domain is “abc.com” and “morepages” is a sub-site. The problem shows as the following:

Bad Request

Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.

Cookie 

————————-

Solution:

It wasn’t clear at first but the error message is telling me exactly what the problem is (the keyword here ladies and gentlemen is “cookie”)

The problem was due to a cookie that has become corrupted. Not sure how it got that way but it seems that the last time it was generated something went wrong.   The easy solution is to delete all your cookies but here is the best way to solve that specific issue, I have created a customized guide for Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer.

Firefox

1. Access the options from the main menu

2. Go to the Privacy tab

3. Click “remove individual cookies”

4. You will get the window below and you can search for cookies on that specific domain (in our example abc.com)

5. To delete the cookies, just select and click “Remove Cookie”

6. Try accessing the site again, if you still have issues you can repeat from step 4

Internet Explorer

1. Access the options from the main menu Tools -> Internet Options

2. Select Settings under the “Browsing history” section in the General tab

3. Select “View files”

4. You can search for those cookies and manually delete them

Google Chrome

1. Click on Settings

2. Enter “cookies” in the search field then click “Content settings”

3. Click “All cookies and site data” under Cookies

4. Select the specific cookie to delete the cookie

————————-

If you found this article useful, don’t forget to share it by clicking one of the buttons below. You can also share your thoughts in the comments section below.

That should fix the error message “400 Bad Request”, if you have any questions or concerns please leave a comment below. You can also follow me on Twitter, add me to your circle on Google+, or like my Facebook page to keep yourself updated on all the latest of Hardware and Software reviews.

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166 Responses to How to Fix the “400 Bad Request” error message from a website

  1. dadecoder says:

    I tried deleting cookies but the 400 bad request error keep on showing..

  2. Which URL are you trying to access?

    Please post a screenshot of the browser showing the error along with the address you are trying to access so I can attempt to troubleshoot

    Thanks

    • Kat says:

      I tried clearing my cookies and browsing history and nothing is helping.
      Whenever I try to go to tumblr, it shows up as a blank white page and in the top left corner it just says:

      “400 Bad request
      Your browser sent an invalid request.”

    • shivskiller says:

      i am not able to remove 400 bad request after deleting cookies….website blackshot account migration process last page.plz help

  3. oreadlaura says:

    Thanks… this worked for me.

  4. FIKA says:

    Excellent, you solved my problem, thank you.

    • Glad you were able to solve your issue by following the instructions. Please re-share the article on social media so more ppl who have the same issue can also find the solution. Thanks

  5. marc says:

    thanks for posting. Great article.

  6. I have fun with, lead to I discovered exactly what I was looking for. You’ve ended my 4 day long hunt! God Bless you man. Have a great day. Bye

  7. Pamela Rose says:

    Did not work for me for Firefox, which seems to be the only browser giving this error. Just started seeing the error today. My site is http://christianeveryday.com. Would love to know if you have any other ideas. Noticing I get the ‘400 bad request’ error about every two times I load a page. Also on the time that it loads not everything is loading.

    • Hello Pamel Rose, if the solutions above did not work. Another possible solution and suggestion would be to flush out your DNS cache by doing the following:

      Open the command prompt, and type “ipconfig /flushdns” then press enter

      It should give you the following message:
      “Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.”

      • Arek says:

        That issue can be caused by corrupted cookies.
        Clear the cache and the cookies from sites that cause problems.
        “Clear the Cache”:
        Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > Offline Storage (Cache): “Clear Now”
        “Remove Cookies” from sites causing problems:
        Tools > Options > Privacy > Cookies: “Show Cookies”.

        It works for me because I had the same problem with my Firefox and deleting cookies does not fixed “Error 400”. By the way – nice site Pamela : ) Greetings Timour.

  8. Pamela Rose says:

    Well strike that … I am getting the error in IE now too

  9. VIKRAM says:

    tanx it realy very use ful for me tanx

  10. Thanks!!!! Спасибо!

  11. Media_nana says:

    thank you very much worked great for me too

  12. Ismael says:

    Thaaaaaaaaaaaaank you !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  13. Samantha says:

    I get this error code on my phone’s browser. I’ve tried deleting all the cookies, cache, history, everything. It seems as though I only get the error code when the website begins with https:// rather than http://. Any suggestions?

  14. Sarah says:

    I have to run a PC test for a work from home company called Convergysworkathome.com the link they include starts up a Java based test to check to see if my Computer is up to snuff (it so totally is) when I go to run the test I get the Bad request message. I have tried different browsers, all the advice you put in this thread, checking to make sure java is up to date, etc. All to no avail. I even emailed them to ask for help but they basically tell me to make sure I have Java (no duh) Please advise if you can.

  15. Hildebrandt says:

    Thanks to helpful fellows humans like you, normal people like me how can use a computer but do not know how to deal with such problems receive valuable help. Thank you so much!!!

  16. Àlex Luque says:

    It worked for me! Thank you!

  17. Claire Whiffen says:

    Awe magic, been trying to fix this for 2 days, thanks your a star!

  18. Fix it its saying 400 bad I can’t fix it

  19. Mark Jansen says:

    I followed all steps but it didnt work;
    TP/1.1 58520741 Content-Length: 89 Content-Type: text/html
    400 Bad Request

  20. Mark Jansen says:

    TP/1.1 58520741 Content-Length: 89 Content-Type: text/html
    400 Bad Request

    I followed all steps but still doesn’t work

  21. When I don’t delete cookies I receive this :

    Bad Request – Invalid Verb
    HTTP Error 400. The request verb is invalid.

    And when I delete cookies I first receive an empty page of that website and in second refreshing the page I receive that error message again .

    But website comes up on other computers .

    Ohhhhhhhhhhh .. Damn it … this is my own website …

  22. LP says:

    Worked like a charm. Thank you!

  23. Mahender says:

    Hey Rahsed!

    It didn’t work for me initially with just above procedure but when I cleared cache after doing the above, it worked. Thank you anyway!

    Cheers!

  24. Nisa says:

    Worked for me! Thank you so much!!!

  25. Tikkou says:

    ok for me thanks

  26. how to play piano says:

    I am actually grateful to the holder of this website who has
    shared this impressive post at at this time.

  27. Santho says:

    Its works fine with chrome… thanks

  28. ofer says:

    Thank you it really helped!

  29. Sanne says:

    Worked like a charm, thanks!

  30. HollyHill says:

    Worked for me and it only took a couple of minutes!

    Thank you!

  31. Joe says:

    Hi, I was trying to visit esrb.org and this error came up. I’ve removed the cookies, but it’s not working.

  32. marianna says:

    thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!

  33. Piterk says:

    I tried to follow instruction for Google Chrome. Apparently, there is no cookies connected to page which doesn’t work. I checked twice, by clicking on the small sheet to the left of web address. There are none – neither cookies to allow nor to block. Can you help me?

  34. Augusto says:

    Congratulations. It’s a good information!

    I’m from Brazil and like your site.

  35. Pingback: “400 Bad Request” en Chrome « SCyASIG

  36. Des says:

    Thanks – worked a treat. Only problem was that this weird-ass box that comes up on the left of your page inviting me into social media sites – it covers half the text (in Chrome).

  37. Charles says:

    Just ran into this problem. This worked for me.

    Thanks!!

  38. Marc Mallary says:

    Thanks so much, it worked perfectly.

  39. Thanks, it worked.

  40. hanker says:

    I have the same problem on my adroid phone~ and already clear all the cookies and restart my phone, but the problem is still there~

  41. Swaroopa says:

    Thank you

    It resolved

  42. Dale says:

    It worked! Thank you so much!!

  43. Beckie says:

    It worked. Thanks!

  44. Vin says:

    Thanks. There were 123 AOL cookies stored! Worked a treat.

  45. Anne says:

    Thank you sooooooooo much!!!

  46. TheTerror says:

    Thank you! This really helped!

  47. dia says:

    thanks!

  48. Brenda says:

    Worked like a charm … thank you so much for your help!!!

  49. sb says:

    Thanks a bunch. Worked perfectly for me!

  50. I tried your fix for Chrome while in Chrome. I am running XP Pro Ver 2002 SVP 2 Intel Pentium 4 CPU 2.4 GHz 2.39 GHz 504 MB of RAM. I did not find the 0.drive.google.com cookie so I was not able to test the fix. I do not get the error message in every attempt to reach a web site. I get it everytime I try to access a Microsoft site and some others. Sometimes I get the error when I try to go directly to a web site other times when I click a Google link. This happens a lot in Internet Explorer, which I have not tested your fix for as of yet. I have hardly any problems with Firefox. Any further suggestions?

    Thank You,
    Robert

  51. Vern Lovic says:

    Not useful… this is a work-around. What is the real fix for it? I have to clear cookies and cache a few times per session when just trying to post a new article to my blog.

    That’s not OK!

    What is the fix for it??? Anybody know? I get this on all browsers. Using WordPress – latest (4.0) with Mac OS 10.9.5 and knownhost.com hosting. Is it Knownhost?

    • As stated in the post, this problem experienced when a cookie gets corrupted. In other words, either the browser corrupts the cookie after a period of time or something went wrong while it was being generated.

      I would suggest narrowing it down to the true culprit, personally I know a specific website that has this problem regardless of the browser, PC, smart phone, or tablet I am using. That means the website itself is generating corrupt cookies i.e the problem lies in the website.

      Since you are getting the issue on all browsers then I am tempted to think the issue is in the Knownhost. If you haven’t tried accessing the blog on the Knownhost.com hosting on a different laptop/desktop/smart phone, it’s worth a shot to see if the same thing happens or not.

      Let me know how it goes and thanks for taking the time to leave a comment

  52. Vern Lovic says:

    Thanks Timour… If it’s the website, then it’s wordpress or the theme. I’ve changed themes and had this happen too, so I scratch that off. I have the latest WordPress versions – and still get the error. There is nothing in the WordPress support database about this – except to increase the header limit size on the server.

    I sent a note to Support@knownhost today. They said they increased the limit on my ‘virtual server’ – so will see if that helped. If it did, I’ll post back here with what they did. There must be hundreds of other people getting this and not knowing what to do about it.

    Cheers,

    Vern

  53. Pingback: Bugs & Fixes: Solving a Yosemite post-install disaster | ocity8helpr63n

  54. sivakumar Shanmugam says:

    Thanks Timour .. this solved my problem. Much appreciated.

  55. sivakumar Shanmugam says:

    Thanks Timour . This solved my problem. Much appreciated.

  56. John says:

    Perfect – the instructions for chrome were spot on – I’ve been perplexed by this for a while and now I’m free from it! One thing, the problem was intermittent – not sure what’s that all about – I’m going to run a virus scan just in case there is something untoward going on 🙂

  57. Michael says:

    i have tried to clean everything…on explore it doesn’t work..but I can access the website on chrome

  58. Kerrie says:

    Thank you! Worked like a dream; just like you instructed.

  59. Brian Sommers says:

    You are my savior.

  60. Tammy says:

    Great tutorial except I’m clueless as to how to identify the cookie I need to delete. I get a humongous list with strange characters for every cookie. Some of them I can identify but the majority I cannot. How can you tell the cookie that needs to be deleted? Please help me. Thanks!

    • Brian Sommers says:

      Tammy: I just deleted all the cookies for the domain that had an issue. I suppose you could do them one by one if you wanted to identify the bad one. What browser are you using?

  61. Alice says:

    Hi, I am a little old grandma and tried to fix “Bad Request

    Your browser sent a request that this server could not understand.
    Size of a request header field exceeds server limit.
    Cookie
    /n
    I was trying to enter the Publishers Clearing House contest hoping to win big. I followed the directions online pertaining to Google Chrome and to no avail. Hope you can help this tec challenged grandma

  62. Jay C says:

    Fabulous! Thanks, Timour!

  63. Mirza Atif says:

    Awesome. it did work as expected. Thanks for sharing

  64. Mike says:

    I thought it was a server problem… googled… found this… tried… and worked!
    I’m using Firefox.

    Thank you very much!

  65. Thank you very much!!! i’ve already clicked “+1” and “like button” this was veeery usefull!!

  66. Irfan says:

    Thanks man it’s working for me

  67. zina says:

    doesn’t work for apple macbook pro? can’t find the cookies???

  68. Bob L says:

    Thank you for writing this. It was most helpful on Firefox and Chrome. Very easy to follow all of your instructions, especially with your illustrations. Thank you again!

  69. Ted says:

    Thanks for the information very helpful and easy to follow, back up and running

  70. john says:

    On my cell phone, I can’t enter sweepstake. How d you fix bad requests on cell phones

  71. Linda says:

    THANK YOU!!!

  72. Patty says:

    Thanks–fixed the problem in Google immediately.

  73. makanda says:

    Have installed haproxy and configured with and it states bad request in ubuntu 14.04 what might be the problem, kindly help

  74. John A. Rupkalvis says:

    I am using a Mac PowerPC G5 withe Mac OS X Version 10.5.8 (the most recent version that can be installed on a non-Intel Mac). I use Gmail on the Safari Version 5.0.6 (5533.22.3), also the most recent version that can be installed on a non-Intel Mac. When I try to access an article in “Variety”, such as this one (http://variety.com/2015/%vertical%/news/tom-hanks-hologram-for-the-king-sold-lionsgate-1201498513/), I get this 400 error message: “Whoops! Your browser sent a request that we were unable to process, clearing the browser cache and cookies is a good first step to try to resolve the issue. Instructions for clearing cache and cookies are different for each browser and version. Google has outlined the steps for all major browsers: Clearing cache and cookies.” I cleared the cache, removed all cookies, and emptied the history. I still get the above error message. This just started happening about two weeks ago; everything worked fine before then. According to the message, this is just a first step. I could not find anything further on the WordPress site. What do I do next?

  75. Adam says:

    Thank you. It worked perfectly.

  76. Darren says:

    It worked! Thank you so much for this!

    • Your welcome Darren, glad the article helped out.

      Let me know if there any further technical issues you may be facing and I would make sure to cover how to resolve them.

  77. Thanks so much! My website prestashop admin login cookie has been intermittently giving me this error. It just started last week. I have had to reboot to clear it, but with your instructions, I was able to remove it. That may stop the errors going forward. If not, at least I know how to quickly fix it. Shared your solution, and thanks again.

  78. BUHANDLE says:

    http://www.ragalahari.com/actress
    comment box is not showing, i cannot put any comments
    please help, thank you.

  79. Karen says:

    Having this problem on chrome. I cleared cookies but it keeps coming back. I am using an iPad so I can’t get as specific as you show. I can only clear all cookies. Any other suggestions? The website is couchtuner.at. I have been using their site for over a year without any problems. Now I can only watch one or two videos before I have to reclear all cookies. Could it be something they may need to correct?

  80. brian says:

    So websites work for me until I log in. Then they don’t come up. I delete all website data and the site works again until I log in. It happens on all browsers. I am running a macbook pro with yosemite.

  81. Philip C Klingensmith says:

    Thanks a million.

  82. Marty says:

    You are a genius, this worked perfectly!

  83. Gaurav says:

    Is there a way not to delete the corrupted cookie and make this work ? I am facing an issue with Firefox browser only and the client doesn’t want to remove the cookie again and again.I am not sure how the corrupted cookie is getting generated,is there a way too figure that out ?

  84. Alan8 says:

    You fixed my problem! Nice clear directions. Thanks!

  85. L J BROST says:

    Followed exactly as laid out. Worked great.

  86. Andy says:

    Very useful – worked just right for me! Many thanks

  87. mcpface says:

    This is excellent – the only link I found that resolves this issue.

  88. Vedant says:

    IT WORKS !!

  89. jose carlos jimenez says:

    Perfecto !!!, gracias mil.

  90. Sydelle says:

    I am getting the same 400 Bad Request error – Error Code: GENERAL_NONSUCCESS. I have tried everything above: cleared cache, cleared cookies, cleared DNS cache, restarted but still no success. Any other suggestions?

  91. tnt says:

    thnx , it works

  92. After weeks of trying to get my problem fixed with no sucess I finally was sucessful after following your directions. So very grateful. You’re my new hero!!! Thank you

  93. Vishwas says:

    Hi Timour,

    I am getting 400 bad request error – Invalid verb in chrome only. In any other browser it is working fine. But in chrome it is showing this error. Moreover, I tried to clear cookies,cache etc but does not works for chrome.
    This problem is happening only when I tried to browse the url in LAN, outside the LAN, the error is not coming.

    Please help me.

  94. Rick says:

    Ya know, in decades of browsing the interwebs I don’t think I ever got a 400 Bad Request error code – until today. I tried clearing recent history in FireFox (cache and cookies) and that wasn’t doing it. The problem was this cookie wasn’t so recent – it had probably been sitting here for days or longer – a lot longer than “clear recent history” was looking back to remove cookies.

    After much pulling hair out – and reading a bunch of cryptic information about 400 error codes that only wanted to blame my computer for sending a bad request but didn’t say ‘boo’ about how that was actually happening – this was the only page here that explained IT WAS DUE TO A FRIKKIN’ BAD COOKIE!!!

    Manually deleted the site cookies in FF – all is now well. Thank you.

    People: You have to know ALL of the cookies a site is generating and putting on your browser. eBay for example sets at least 3 different main cookies. PayPal – again at least 3 or 4 that need to be located and deleted. The 400 error may be the result of a now trashed cookie – but you need to find all the cookies that the page is setting. If in doubt or you don’t understand how to find all the cookies the 400 error site is setting just delete all cookies – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing to do occasionally to begin with. Believe me – those annoying little buggers will always come back again if needed.

  95. Tristan says:

    Thanks man, I think the problem a lot of people are getting is that they aren’t removing cookies from ALL the sites related to the one that was messing up. What happened with me is that it didn’t work until I removed all cookies from all the different playstation.store sites I had cookies in.

  96. setumpuk says:

    You really make it seem really easy along with your presentation but I find this matter to be really something which I
    feel I would by no means understand. It seems too complex and extremely
    broad for me. I am having a look forward in your next publish, I’ll try to get the dangle of it!

  97. ms says:

    This is very entertaining — the problem really is: which cookies to remove? How does one find out the names of cookies used by a particular website, e.g. Verizon?

  98. Pingback: Site News – got some bad cookies | The Red Ferret Journal

  99. The Jesus says:

    Genius. Rick sealed the deal when he said you have to delete *ALL* the cookies a website leaves.

  100. Bola Muyis says:

    Thank you, this helped me just moments ago.

  101. Amelia says:

    Thank you! It worked for me. Appreciate your help. Great post

  102. Sam says:

    Thanks a million, the Boots website bad request was driving me mad!

  103. John says:

    Brilliant, saved me lots of time on a Monday morning… thanks

  104. I have 400 bad request plz give me the solution how to fixed ..

  105. Stephanie Baker-Thomas says:

    Thank you so much, this problem was making my pull my hair out. Your solution worked and I can access the web site again. Great!

  106. THANKFUL says:

    PERFECT!!

  107. Curious says:

    Hi there. Just came across this issue today, however what I’m experiencing is a little different, and I will endeavour to explain as best as I can. Now firstly, regardless of which browser I use, the 400 error only comes up on one website I visit from time to time. Secondly, I tried the steps above (all of them), and still nothing. Thirdly, when I’ve tried the browser in safe mode, the 400 error pops up briefly, and I am then redirected to an error 523 page. Lastly, as well as the error itself, after I’ve typed in this particular web address and press enter, it is immediately followed by a / then another web address repeatedly after it (all other websites work). Does this mean the error be on the website server, and not on my end?

    • Considering that an Error 523, it means that there is an issue from the web server, I would agree the issue may be on the website’s side.

      A common cause is that the DNS setting has changed. Sometimes, hosting providers update the origin IP information for their customers.

      The suggestion is to clear the DNS and allow a fresh copy to be fetched. If you are running windows, running “ipconfig /flushdns” via the command line should do that.

      It should give you the following message:
      “Successfully flushed the DNS Resolver Cache.”

  108. Curious says:

    Thank you for getting back to me. So in doing my research into what could have been wrong on the websites end, I discovered that the website wasn’t in anyway down or had not indeed been hacked, as confirmed by downoruprightnow.com, and confirmed it as could access the website from my smartphone. I had also tried the flush dns thing, which also didn’t work. So I attempted to do more research into what was wrong on my end, and found another set of instructions to try and solve the issue. And solve it I finally did, when I was forced to go into my browser options, and manually clear the cache and offline/user data that way (I had only tried the clear history prior to that, which strangely didn’t work). To be safe I’ll do that with all my browsers. I admit I was starting to get worried, as I have never encountered anything like that before, and how it presented was so unusual. But thanks to you, in part, for your steps above helping me to eventually solve the issue.

  109. Elaine says:

    Thanks so much, perfect solution, worked first time!

  110. heste says:

    You saved me a huge headache – thank you!!!!

  111. S says:

    Gerat. Many thanks.

  112. S says:

    Great. It worked. Thanks.

  113. Denise says:

    Deleting the specific cookie worked like a charm – thanks!

  114. Tyrone says:

    This only works if the issue is on the browser side. However, the server can be misconfigured in ways that will also produce a “400 Bad Request
    Request Header Or Cookie Too Large” error. (e.g. Incorrectly installed SSL certificate.) In that case, screwing with the browser won’t help.

  115. sf says:

    I had the issue and couldn’t figure out the whole morning, just fixed. Thank you so much!

  116. Harry says:

    Woah – thanks a lot man! Helped, and saved my ass!

  117. Bharat says:

    Perfect Solution, it worked

  118. BaliRob says:

    Huawei 4.4.4 Chel04 HEADING = track.dagafda.com//click?_type=s…MESSAGE = 400 error message this campaign has been stop ( and similar other messages)

    Have Googled this many times – nothing found. Every few mintes it is repeated coming across
    every app that I may be on. I stupidly followed advice to clear cookies and cashes and ended
    up losing four days data in WhatsApp & total Contacts missing except mandatory numbers.

    I have retained Chrome but deleted Firefox, Browser and Google search engines (I thouight that
    Browser was the culprit because it seem to start at about the time I tried it for the first time but could not remember the search I performed) but still the evil 400 keeps returning.

    Any advice please but please not including going into data program amendment because I would be lost.

    Thank you.

  119. BaliRob says:

    I would like to add to my post (above) – by saying that I downloaded Malwarebytes last night and I am very impressed – after a three hour scan my phone is faster than when new – so far no sign of the 400 Error nuisance page. Also the advice given in its conclusion about certain apps is valuable.

  120. Johnny Favorite says:

    It works for Firefox, thank you very much from Spain!

  121. jack says:

    thanks for the advice!

  122. Pingback: 400 Bad Request Error

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