Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

Why does Gmail stall with a blank screen?

Dave, I have been a gmail member for almost a year now and in the last month I have been unable to access my gmail account it run through both loading screens and then stops with a blank white page. No error message just a white page. I recently found a bloodhound flash virus on my computer and promptly removed it. My software is unchanged I use Windows XP Home - my PC is a custom built Athalon 1Ghz processor 512 Mb ram 30 plus gig hd with half still free space the only thing new is my DVD/CDRW combo and I have even gone so far as to disconnect it and uninstall the software and it made no difference. I'm not very good with code but hardware and computers in general I am fairly literate. Help please.

Dave's Answer:

This sounds like a puzzling and frustrating experience, for sure. I have sporadically seen this problem with Gmail myself, and sometimes clearing the Web browser cache can be a simple solution.

If you're running MSIE on your Windows XP Home system, then you could pop over to Download.com and search for "IE cache" to see what applications are available to help you with this.

If you're running Firefox, there's an option in the Preferences section under "Privacy" called "Cache" where you can erase everything in the cache.

Another possibility: did you disable Javascript in your browser? You definitely need Javascript enabled to have Gmail work properly.

But before you go too far down that path, I'd be curious about whether you really got rid of all traces of the Bloodhound Flash Virus on your computer. One possible explanation of what's happening is that there's some spyware somehow being triggered when you try to get to your Gmail and that spyware is causing the browser to be unable to proceed?

I'd run a couple of different anti-virus and anti-spyware applications (I run Norton AntiVirus 2006 and the combination of Spybot Search & Destroy and Webroot's Spy Sweeper on my own Windows XP Pro systems, just FYI)

It'd also be useful to try accessing your Gmail account using a different browser on your computer and trying to access it from a different computer entirely. Do they work? Is your account working properly?

Good luck. This kind of problem can be quite puzzling!

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Comments

I've noticed this too on a Win XP Pro machine using IE (can't recall if I've seen it on the Win XP Home machine and Firefox).

It seems to happen when the URL is
https://mail.google.com/mail/
which is what the Gmail Notifier app uses.

When it happens, opening my favorite of:
https://gmail.google.com
will cause it to display properly!

Posted by: Mike Goggin at November 30, 2005 5:48 AM

I had a similar problem with Firefox (1.07) on Linux (Debian) which I think I solved by telling the browser to connect directly to the internet and skip the Privoxy ad-blocking proxy I normally use. https:// urls always worked, just not http://, which would be, in my case, since Privoxy was only handling ordinary HTTP and not secure HTTPS.

Posted by: celejar at December 27, 2005 8:22 AM

Mike Goggin's solution worked for us as well.

https://gmail.google.com

Thanks Mike!

Posted by: bk at January 11, 2008 10:26 AM

I just had this problem with the white screen start for me within the past month.

It only happens if im ALREADY LOGGED IN and try to type in gmail.com or click on gmail from google.com

If I log out and re-login, it will load, but this is tediously time consuming for every time I want to read my e-mail.

It is happening on both my laptop and desktop. What was weird was I hadn't used my desktop in at least a month, but as soon as I started it I was having this problem and the last time I had used my desktop before, it had worked fine.

Any suggestions?

Posted by: Kat at January 15, 2008 11:59 AM

Delete your cookies and log in again. That worked for me. First time logging in takes a couple seconds longer than normal.

Posted by: Bernd at January 16, 2008 9:14 AM

Mike's way worked for me too, thanks Mike!

Posted by: Cory at January 18, 2008 10:42 PM

Hi,

I too am experiencing this problem.

1. Deleting cookies , clearing cache or repairing the jre resolves the issue for a few days and after some days, it resurfaces.

Any other idea to resolve it.

Thanks,

Posted by: online@123 at February 7, 2008 12:51 PM

Oh...what is firefox?

Posted by: Sue at November 2, 2008 6:11 PM

hello,
i suffered gmail's blank page issue until i switched to the 'older version' - http://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=1

amazing that an organisation the size of google can't do decent QA before 'upgrading' software.

Posted by: howard at November 6, 2008 1:37 AM

Try disabling Google Gears, I'm having this issue too and that fixed it.

Posted by: Matt at March 19, 2009 11:17 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!