"SITENAME" DNS address could not be found. Diagnosing the problem. DNS_PROBE_POSSIBLE

Many sites that I try to access wont load up and I get a ‘dns_probe_possible’ message. The site then usually loads up automatically by itself after a few minutes. There’s no pattern to this. Some days it hardly happens and other days it happens constantly.

It’s difficult to reproduce as it’s not consistent. Using the browser in private mode doesn’t prevent it either - so it’s not the extensions. Turning the dns settings in the browser off/on makes no difference. Using ISP or 3rd party dns in router settings makes no difference. Using different shield options, or even disabling shield, doesn’t fix it.

This only happens on the windows 10 desktop browser (1.36.119 ), and has been the case for several months now.

  • I am not using a vpn or secure DNS
  • I’ve tried a clean brave profile, no joy
  • The websites are not faulty as they work with other browsers.
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Related topics that may help:

I’ve seen this numerous times and was on the verge of tearing my hair out when I stumbled on “a” fix. Don’t know if it’s “the” fix:

On Win10, in Windows Security>Firewall and network protection, click on “Restore firewalls to default

Once done, browsing proceeds normally. Suspect something gets altered in the firewall settings (by Brave???) that only triggers on some (unknown) event; apparently once triggered, it is persistent until the above procedure resets the firewall settings to default. Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly. Don’t have a clue what the trigger might be, but this may provide a clue.

Interesting facts: This behavior was never seen before installing Brave. Even then, I’ve never seen it triggered by another browser I still use periodically (Firefox). Additionally, once the “feature” is triggered, it also blocks traffic on other browsers I have installed (Edge, Firefox) until the block is cleared as above.

I never had the patience to refresh the page enough times to get rid of the error, so I found my “fix” instead. I don’t do anything to change configuration of the firewall settings, so I don’t expect the reset to have any adverse consequences. To date I’ve seen none.

Hope this helps! Good luck finding it.

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@jumpingjax Wow, thank-you for sharing! I wonder if this has something to do with an issue I’ve been experiencing with Brave: Firefox settings are hijacking or hijacked by Brave

I’m going to try this! Although I think I’ve been banned for spamming the site I was using for testing. :laughing:

Ditto.

Whoa, dude! It is a very big leap to suggest that Brave is hijacking Firefox settings; I didn’t say that and didn’t mean to suggest that. If there is a hijack at all, it would be to a generic feature of the firewall and not specific to any browser once triggered. Maybe. Possibly. I guess.

Don’t go too far with this idea until someone knowledgeable down in the code looks into it.

lol That was just the title of that post, created by someone else. It wasn’t created by me, I was just experiencing the same issue and started posting there. I did use “hijack” in quotes as reference in some one of my posts, but it was not meant to imply that Brave was doing this with intent, just that as you say, something was triggered that caused unexpected results.

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