"This site can't be reached. example.com took too long to respond." Then three suggestions: checking the connection, checking the proxy and the firewall, running Windows Network Diagnostics. And at the bottom, ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT. The middle suggestion sends a great many people hunting for a proxy they have never configured, and then, having found nothing, to search engines, which is how a proxy company ends up writing a guide to a page that usually has no proxy in it.
The suggestion is not wrong, exactly. It is generic. Chrome prints the same three lines on every timeout, because from where Chrome sits, a site that never answers and a proxy that never answers look the same. So the sensible order is: rule the proxy out in thirty seconds, then spend the real time on the causes that actually produce this page.
What the error means
Chromium files this as error -118, ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT. Chrome sent the packets that open a connection, waited, and heard nothing back within its limit. That silence is the whole diagnosis, and it separates this page from its neighbours:
| Chrome error | Chromium code | What happened | Where to look |
|---|---|---|---|
| ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT | -118 | No answer at all | The path: DNS, firewall, router, the site itself |
| ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED | -102 | The server answered "no" | The site is up but nothing listens on that port |
| ERR_CONNECTION_RESET | -101 | The connection was cut mid-way | A filter or a broken middlebox |
| ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED | -105 | The name did not resolve | DNS |
| ERR_PROXY_CONNECTION_FAILED | -130 | A configured proxy could not be reached | The proxy setting |
A timeout is silence. Something between Chrome and the server is swallowing the packets, or the server is too busy to answer, or the packets are being sent to the wrong address. Each of the causes below is one of those three.
Rule the proxy out in thirty seconds
On Windows, open Settings, Network & internet, Proxy. Under Manual proxy setup, Use a proxy server should be off; under Automatic proxy setup, Use setup script should be off. Then open chrome://extensions and check that no proxy or VPN extension is enabled, and chrome://policy for a ProxyServer entry. On a Mac, open System Settings, Network, your connection, Details, Proxies, and confirm nothing is ticked.
All off? The proxy is ruled out, and the rest of Chrome's suggestion was about the firewall. If something was on and you did not set it, read the address before you switch it off: our guide on turning a proxy off explains what a 127.0.0.1 address means versus an unfamiliar public one, and when a leftover setting is worth a scan.
One case where the proxy genuinely is the cause: you set one on purpose, and it is dying. A proxy that is fully dead produces the proxy error, not this page. A proxy that accepts the connection and then hangs, which is how overloaded free proxies behave, produces exactly this timeout. Run the address through our proxy checker: a response time in seconds rather than milliseconds means the proxy is saturated, and the fix is a different one.
The causes that actually produce this page
1. The site is down or overloaded
The simplest cause, and worth checking first because nothing on your side fixes it. Open the site from a phone on mobile data. If it times out there too, the site is unreachable for everyone, and the only fix is waiting. A site that loads on mobile and not on your computer has a problem on your path, and the rest of this list is that path.
2. DNS is handing you a wrong or stale address
If the name resolves to an address that no longer serves the site, every connection attempt goes to a machine that ignores it, and the result is a timeout rather than a name error. Flush the cache and try a different resolver:
ipconfig /flushdns
nslookup example.com 1.1.1.1
If the second command returns a different address than your normal resolver does, your resolver is stale. Set the connection's DNS to a public resolver such as 1.1.1.1 or 8.8.8.8 and reload. On a Mac, sudo dscacheutil -flushcache; sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder clears the cache.
3. A firewall or security suite is dropping the connection
Firewalls that block rather than reject produce silence, which is a timeout. Windows Defender Firewall normally allows Chrome, but a third-party firewall, an antivirus with a "web shield", or a parental-control product can drop connections to specific sites or ports. Open Windows Security, Firewall & network protection, Allow an app through firewall, and confirm Chrome is allowed on private and public networks. Then temporarily disable the third-party product and reload. If the page loads, add an exception rather than leaving the product off.
4. The hosts file points the site somewhere dead
A line in the hosts file overrides DNS for a name, and a leftover entry from an ad blocker, a development setup, or malware sends the site to an address that never answers. On Windows the file is C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts; on a Mac and Linux it is /etc/hosts. Open it and look for the site's name. An entry you did not add, especially one pointing a popular site at a strange address, is worth treating as a sign of tampering.
5. The router, the VPN, or IPv6
Restart the router; a stale connection table on a home router produces timeouts to some sites and not others. Disconnect any VPN and reload, since a VPN that is half-connected drops traffic silently. And try disabling IPv6 on the adapter as a test: a broken IPv6 path makes a site that advertises both address families time out while sites that are IPv4-only load fine. If disabling IPv6 fixes it, the ISP's IPv6 routing is the fault, and re-enabling it later is worth a try after they fix it.
6. The site is dropping you on purpose
This is the cause that sends people to a proxy company. Some sites do not refuse visitors they do not want; they drop the packets, which produces a timeout indistinguishable from an outage. Region blocks, blocks on VPN and datacenter ranges, and blocks on addresses that have been abused all take this shape. The tell is that the site works from a different network or a different country and never from yours.
Test it. Load the site through a proxy in another country, or from a friend's connection. If it loads, the site is up and your address is being dropped. If the block is on a VPN exit or a shared address, turning the VPN off or changing networks solves it. If it is a region block, a residential proxy in the served region is the standard tool, and our guide to how websites detect proxies explains why a residential address gets through where a datacenter one is dropped again.
Test the path from the command line
Two commands settle most of these in under a minute. On Windows, in PowerShell:
Test-NetConnection example.com -Port 443
TcpTestSucceeded : True means the path is fine and the problem is inside the browser (extensions, a policy, a profile). False, with the address shown, means the timeout is real at the network level and Chrome is only the messenger. On a Mac or Linux:
curl -v --max-time 10 https://example.com/ -o /dev/null
A hang followed by "Connection timed out" confirms the network-level timeout; a fast response means the browser is the problem. In both cases, tracert example.com (Windows) or traceroute example.com shows where the packets stop, which tells a router problem from a far-end problem.
When the timeout is your proxy's fault
For readers who configured a proxy deliberately, the diagnosis flips. The proxy answered the connection and then failed to deliver, which means it is overloaded, its own upstream is broken, or the target is dropping the proxy's address. Check its response time in the proxy checker, try a second site through the same proxy to see whether the failure is site-specific, and switch exits if the proxy is slow to everything. Free proxies produce this page constantly, because dozens of people share each one and the address is saturated long before you arrive. A paid residential or ISP proxy with a fixed address answers in milliseconds and stays answering, which is the difference between a tool and a lottery ticket.
The checks, in order
Confirm the proxy is off in system settings, extensions, and policy. Test the site from another network. Flush DNS and try a public resolver. Check the firewall, the hosts file, the VPN, and IPv6. If the site loads from elsewhere and never from your address, it is dropping you, and the fix is a different address. The page told you to check the proxy; now you know what it was actually asking.