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I switched from Wildblue to Exede and immediately started getting content encoding errors on sites that worked before.

  • 7 replies
  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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...even before the installer left. He said it was the website, but now FARK and alot of my favorites just show content encoding error. Tech support said website issues or browser problems. All we did was put in a new satellite dish and modem. All of my basic account info stays the same - e-mail, passwords, etc. Why did this happen and is there something I can do to fix it. The installer is baffled. Says he's never heard of it.

...even before the installer left. He said it was the website, but now FARK and alot of my favorites just show content encoding error. Tech support said website issues or browser problems. All we did was put in a new satellite dish and modem. All of my basic account info stays the same - e-mail, passwords, etc. Why did this happen and is there something I can do to fix it. The installer is baffled. Says he's never heard of it.

All Replies (7)

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The Reset Firefox feature can fix many issues by restoring Firefox to its factory default state while saving your essential information. Note: This will cause you to lose any Extensions, Open websites, and some Preferences.

To Reset Firefox do the following:

  1. Go to Firefox > Help > Troubleshooting Information.
  2. Click the "Reset Firefox" button.
  3. Firefox will close and reset. After Firefox is done, it will show a window with the information that is imported. Click Finish.
  4. Firefox will open with all factory defaults applied.


Further information can be found in the Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

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Thank you for taking the time to respond. Not only did that not fix it, when the browser reopened, this page: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/18.0.1/firstrun/ ..popped up with the same content encoding error message.

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See:

You can try to reset (power off/on) the router.


Try to boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps.

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Powering down the router and modem, or resteeing, does not fix the problem. The Viasat (they own both Wildblue and Exede) Tech gave me the same bad advice I saw in another post here: Go into about:config and change the network accept encoding from gzip,deflate to true. This IS bad advice. What it did was allow me to access all of the websites I got the content encoding error from (good) and also KILLED gmail, google ads and google search! So I went back and did the default reset, and now its the same problem. Sigh. Any other work arounds?

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when I try to go here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Error_loading_websites - as suggested, I get the same content encoding error. The only way to do that at this point in time would be to go back and reset to true again.

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I downloaded Google Chrome and I get the error message 330:

This webpage is not available The webpage at http://www.wunderground.com/ might be temporarily down or it may have moved permanently to a new web address. Error 330 (net::ERR_CONTENT_DECODING_FAILED): Unknown error.

...on all of the same pages that Firefox can't open.

...so this may be more of an issue with the satellite provider than the browser?

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That is gzip encoded content on the www.wunderground.com page.

Which security software (firewall, anti-virus) do you have?

Try to boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps.