Gmail starts to freak out with crashes, errors and oops!
Gmail seems to be going through a pretty rocky time of the month right now. In the past 48 hours, I have been watching my Gmail lurch from the old version to the new version and back again. That, and also emails failing to send and the page crashing more times than an Aeroflot plane. In fact it is going so crazy that I have “oops!” messages coming out of my ears.
It all started a long time ago (well yesterday actually) in a galaxy far far away (Germany) when I logged into Gmail and found an almost-empty screen :
Refreshing the page didn’t help. The Gmail “Known Issues” page suggests that you should check the URL to make sure that you are accessing Gmail at https://mail.google.com so I tried that and bang, I lost my new Gmail interface and ended up with the old version. Suddenly all the updated Greasemonkey scripts stopped working as well. My bookmarkable Gmail pages automatically reverted back to the old version too.
Being the laid-back cool guy that I am, I shrugged it off as a temporary glitch and decided to use the old Gmail interface for the time being. But hang on, why isn’t my email sending as I requested?
This went on for 5 or 6 times before the email finally went away. But the recipients were reporting huge delays in the emails arriving at their end. Gmail also suddenly slowed down to the point where Hotmail suddenly looked like a good prospect.
Then the new Gmail came back (briefly) and I started to see this a lot :
By this point, if someone said “oops!” to me one more time, I was going to completely lose it. Grudgingly, I started to disable all my Gmail Greasemonkey scripts, Firefox extensions and I wiped the cookies and the cache - all to no avail.
But chatting with friends and contact with Gmail addresses, I discovered that I seem to be the only one with this problem. Being in Germany, and with German Gmail users being run off Germany-based servers, I started wondering if this was a exclusively European problem. A friend in Denmark reported that his Gmail was running slower than normal and a friend in Austria said the same. But Google is strangely quiet on the subject. Nothing has been mentioned on their blog (something along the lines of “we are aware of the problem and we are working to fix it” would have been reassuring) and no other blogs are reporting Gmail issues.
Are you experiencing difficulties with your Gmail? After 4 years, you would think that Gmail would be well developed enough for the beta label to be finally shed and for these kinds of problems not to occur so frequently. Ah well, I can dream can’t I?
UPDATE: Phil has added a bit more deatil on this in his Gmail error #102 post.
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I’m in Canada and having the same problem with “Oops… the system encountered a problem (#102).” It’s been happening for a couple of days now.
Same thing’s been happening in Israel … on our town’s community email list there are several questions/concerns. AIH mine has calmed down, but it was useless last night (Saturday).
for reference I just checked my account, its fine, I’m in the US
I’ve been having the same exact issues for the last 12 hours or so, and I’m in Florida, USA. It seems to be clearing up a bit at the moment, tho .. fingers crossed.
l am in the US (West Virginia) & have been having the same problems all day
I’ve had the exact same problems here in the US for the past 24 hours - it seems to be better now, but I’ll be knocking on wood.
I’m in Canada and having the same problems that you and Mark report. Very frustrating!!
In MD and been having the issue since Friday. I am also seeing a yellow message flashing on my CHAT list on gmail saying they are experienceing technical difficulties that may preven tmy chats from being sent.
I’ve been having the same problems off and on for the past two days (I’m in Virginia). At first I thought it was a bug caused by the Enhance Gmail greasemonkey script or Remember the Milk’s Firefox extension for Gmail, both of which I had recently installed, but disabling both of them did not correct the problem. Glad to know I’m not the only one experiencing this.
You would think that Gmail could get out of beta status by now, especially since it’s Google’s premier software product. Of course, since Reader stagnated for a long time after graduating out of beta maybe Gmail should stay as it is.
I have noticed multiple problems.
Gmail Chat disappears: You will be chatting and the gmail chat goes out and says experiencing difficulties. You can refresh or log out and go back in and the gmail chat disappears completely. The chat also disappears when the email box is open and it performs a refresh for the inbox. The chat box disappears including the link at the bottom of the page that gives you the option for chat or basic HTML inbox.
Log in: Upon logging in you are taken to a blank page. A refresh does not get you in. I can click for the google home page and it takes me there and it is logged in, but upon going back to the email it is just a blank page. After waiting a few moments and trying again it is available, sometimes with the chat and sometimes without.
Gmail Accounts: I went to manually refresh one of my imap accounts under settings and it wasn’t there. I refreshed and signed in and back out with no luck. Ten minutes later I tried again and it was there.
Error Codes: When I archive a message It sometimes hangs and I get an error message code (sorry I don’t recall the number). I get this of course several times a day.
The above errors are not limited to my computer, certain browsers or Operating systems. I can’t recall a time that I have had this many problems with Gmail.
I have noticed that when I add an s to the http I dont have these problems.
I was googling to see if anyone else is reporting this problem. I am in Seattle, WA and I have been having this problem intermittently for a few days. The error #102 oops is really pissing me off. On a few occasions I can’t access my account but more commonly its the problem with sending or refreshing mail. My husband has not received some emails I send him on Thursday after 3 attempts of #102’s. Where has it gone? Who knows.
I hope it is a short term thing because I am getting really frustrated.
Gmail is my only mail and I really depend on it.
Shannon
I am yet to see this error.
I am having problems only with the built in chat option.
The mail is working normally.
I am in Malta (Europe)
I have been having a silmilar issue, where blank page shows up, and I can’t login, or only intermittently can login for the past 3 days. Logged in in the morning, then couldn’t again till later when I opened gmail with firefox instead of my default browser IE. IMHO… I don’t think that it’s has anything to do with browser support though, I think its an intermittent problem with google being accessible to anyone.
Same here. Exact same types of errors as reported above. I’ve been logging in and out to stay productive. Usually works.
I’m in Florida and glad to know that I’m not the only one experiencing problems with gmail these past few days.
I am also in the same boat
okay - glad i found the spot telling me leave a comment. I am in N.Calif and can NOT sign in; blank page shows up, either from browser OR websearch…this just started today also. Refresh = ZIP. How about saying “We’re trying to fix this”, or even one “OOPS!” etc.??? Sure glad I have other chat/inboxes. WHAT’s UP, Google? Please give us a clue!
I’ve got an update — our engineers have identified the problem and are working on a fix. For the time being, there are several options available for users affected by this issue:
1. Use IE7 to access the newer version of Gmail at http://mail.google.com/mail?hist=0
2. Set your IE7 preferences to always clear your cache when you close IE.
3. Use IE7 to access the classic version of Gmail at http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1
4. Access your account with another browser such as Mozilla Firefox
Do you work for Google?
I’m in Maine & have been having problems with gmail being exremely slow to load on my home computer. I wrote this off as being a dial-up issue. Haven’t experienced that at work where I have a high-speed connection. BUT here is a new one for you…….. I received an email this morning from a woman in the UK who has the same name as my daughter, same address only with a googlemail extension whereas my daughter’s is gmail. Apparently all of my emails to my daughter have been sent to this woman in the UK! She said she had tried to contact me several times, but her messages never reached me prior to today. This has been going on for several months! I knew there was a problem as my daughter has let me know that she wasn’t getting email from me, but for mail to be sent to another person is a giant mistake on Google’s part! What’s up with this?
Jayne : Gmail and Googlemail are one and the same. European users have to use Googlemail because of a trademark dispute here in Germany (a German businessman owns Gmail.de and he has been fighting Google for years. A German judge ordered Google to stop using the name Gmail in Germany and so European users suddenly found their email addresses to be Google Mail instead of Gmail).
However, username@gmail.com and username@googlemail.com are the SAME email address. Emails sent to one will automatically go to the other. If you own username@gmail.com, you also own username@googlemail.com . So I fail to understand how this UK woman can claim to own the same email address as your daughter! It’s technically impossible for two people to own the same email address!
Check the email address of this woman - does it differ in any way from your daughter’s address - any dots, dashes or other characters in the email name?
If I were you, I would contact Gmail and file a report. You can get there by clicking on “help” in the top right hand corner of the Gmail screen. From there, there is a link to send an email to Gmail.
I have the same problem. It happens when I use firefox, but with IE7 I have no problem.
Guess, I should have been more specific (didnt read all the comments before posting). My previous comment is refering to the 102 error. I have used the “https” that Robert mentioned before, but its crap I have to go to the extra effort.
I am having the same problem too. Here is what happened I logged into my box and there I noticed that it had mysteriously created two Google calendars which I never recalled creating. I recognised that calendar had to do with a friend of mine, although I found it strange he was asking me to share his calendar.
Anyway way when I looked to the left I noticed that under the chat my name was listed twice, when I hovered over it is said my name, my slogan and my fried email as being associated with me and his picture was displaying.
So I tried sending him an email to tell him google was freaking out. In the To address box it had “My Name” and his signature at the bottom of the message.
What I did was that I captured the image like I did with some others. For the last weeks I have been getting cached versions of other people email….So whats up with Google?
I did get a #102 error when I tried to open the Calendar. Like some users I am using Firefox but it clears my cache when I close my browser.
gmail won’t let me open my mail in CA, U.S.A. 2.5.08
I was trying to send email from a business web site and their email sent me to google email, the page never opened just kept “loading” what am I doing wrong? I need to send emails to these company’s and that is the only way I can. Please help.
OK, This is not going to fix it but it makes feel better. My computer crashes a lot ether when i send or save an email. This is a serious pain in the neck. Please help me out. I receive a “Page _fault_in_ Non_ page_ area”code every time. Says file is: cwmtdI.Sys. HELP !!
hi guys,
I’m also facing the same problem, its nt the browser prblm, because i’m running mozilla, ie, opera.
Error: “oops.. the system encountered a problem (#102)”
But i’m facing problem’s accessing my mails on yahoo, rediff etc.
they all have started ocurring at the same time, I think this is DNS problem or with wi fi consumers
I am in Taiwan, having the same problem. Just thinking to move to Hotmail if it could not be fixed recently.
03-05-2008
Having this problem in Southern California, using firefox. aggravating.
After a few weeks of constant poor performance and error messages (#102, #502, and #602 - the latter I cannot find any information on), I am ready to jump ship. It appears many people are having similar issues, but I can’t find any mention from Google of what they might be doing to fix the problems. These error messages have been occurring for me using Firefox, Camino, and Safari - on different machines, and in different locations!
Sounds like a world wide problem… Hummmm Only one thing comes to mind !
After experiencing some of those errors, I logged out then back in again. I stepped back into the old Gmail interface and lost my chat functions as well. What’s going on here? I miss my colored labels already…
I’ve used yahoo! mail for years with nearly zero problems. I opened a gmail account three weeks ago, and have seen,”Oops! problem encountered error #102,” since day one. It happens EVERY TIME I log in, and I’ve fortunately found that clicking “older version,” appears to alleviate the problem. Wow, Google, I must say your “newer version”, well… it sucks. I spent money to upgrade my Yahoo! mail so I could have it forwarded to my new gmail address. I guess I’ve learned the hard way. If this is any indication of ANY OTHER GOOGLE PRODUCTS, you can keep them.
Cape Town South Africa has the same problem. I depend on this e-mail address. Pleeeaaassse Google get your asses in gear!!
The Old Version doesn’t work in South Africa…it just gives a blank screen & e-mails seem to be unable to be sent.
Sometimes I can’t open any mails.
We need a solution quiick
In Johannesburg SA and have been experiencing the same problem for a couple of weeks now. Whats even worse is that I have receiced a 120 spam mails in 3 days.
I was using firefox and tried to sent a mail from yahoo, it was taking awful time so i went to use gmail. Here, i got the error #102 problem. Then, i thought, it may be the browser has something to do with it so i shifted to Opera and guess what! I successfully sent the mail from gmail and also i tested from yahoo, it worked here also.
I’m in New York and having the same problem. It occurs once in a while usually - but today it is terrible. Switching to Firefox helped temporarily, but it didn’t render the page correctly and started giving the same “Oops…” error.
Wow, I can’t believe I read through most of the postings listed here and didn’t see a single instance of anyone stating what seems to be the true problem with this “Oops…” whatever #102 error.
The problem is not with your Web Browser being Internet Explorer etc., It’s that you are most likely using an Ad Blocker such as that natively built into versions of Symantec Antivirus. If you are running such a thing, temporarily disable it and refresh your Gmail page (F5). You should see that you no longer get “Oops…” messages.
Jason
P.S. I’m not liking the fact that Gmail is basically requiring users to allow the “Sponsor Link” (Ad Banner) or else continually get the “Oops…” messages and degraded performance.
hep! here to in OZ for the past week gmail crash freezing up the google search page, general error messages, do I have to switch to AAAH! outlook? so that I can get mail
O.K., I tried to read as much I could from the discussions above, but I couldn’t find if there is possible solution at all for fixing the problem with ‘Oops… the system encountered a problem (#102)’ or I should just wait for gmail to fix it by itself?
Tanks for your answer!
P.S. I wrote to google support, but i just got an automatic replay with many ways to fix other problems then the one I am asking about