Windows

[Solved] This Site Can’t be Reached in Google Chrome

“This site can’t be reached”- every Google Chrome user across the world has come face to face with this problem. But, it is quite surprising that even if the problem is widespread, very few users know how to circumvent the problem and open the site. In this ‘How to fix this site can’t be reached in Chrome’ article, we will show you how to navigate through this error and bypass it.

First, let us look at some of the variants of the error message that you might be getting on you Google Chrome because of this one problem.

“ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT”
“Unexpectedly closed the connection.”
“Server DNS address could not be found.”
“Server not found.”
“ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED”
“Domain cannot be found.”
“DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN”
“ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED”
“ERR_CONNECTION_RESET”

All these messages point to the problem that the DNS lookup for the website that you are searching for failed. DNS or Domain Name Servers is the service that converts the name of the site into its IP Address, thus allowing your computer to understand and access the website.

It is like the telephone book equivalent for your computer to help navigate the internet. So, when you are typing the name of a site like www.quora.com, the internet service provider uses the DNS and finds the IP address for this website and helps your machine connect you to this website. Thus when a site cannot be reached it occurs it can be because of these several reasons:

The DNS server may be unresponsive.
The Windows DNS client may not be working.
Google Chrome may be prevented by a Firewall from network access.

An incompatible or old TLS (Transport Layer Security) can cause the problem
Google Chrome version is out of date.

You should begin to solve this problem by clearing all Cache memory and deleting all the cookies on your Chrome Browser. Also, the Google Chrome installed on your computer is the latest version. After that, try these solutions:

Table of Contents

Fix This Site Can’t Be Reached Error

DNS Client Restart

Also, restarting the DNS client may help in the connectivity issue with this service and solve the problem. Press Windows and the ‘R’ key together to open the ‘Run’ dialogue box and then follow these steps:

In the Run box, type “services.msc” and press enter.
Scan through the resultant Service list to locate the DNS Client.
Right click on ‘DNS Client’ and select Restart.

Restart your computer and check on Google Chrome (with the same website you tried before) to see if still you’re facing this site can’t be reached error.

Switch on DNS Prefetching

Sometimes, when you are using multiple web browsers but the problem is repeatedly occurring, and only on Chrome then this solution can be well suited for you.

Open ‘Settings’ on Chrome, and go to the ‘Privacy’ column under advanced settings.
Browse through the list and select the checkbox that says “Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly.”

Choosing this will change the Chrome settings and restart only your chrome will show if the problem has been solved or not.

Changing TLS version

As mentioned earlier TLS or the Transport Layer Security which is responsible for providing security over the computer network. To update the TLS in Chrome:

Type “chrome://flags” where you would type in the website name (the address bar).
In the resultant page, you will find a list of options. Select the drop-down menu called “Maximum TLS version-enabled.”
Select the version 1.3.
Restart only your chrome and try to visit the website that was previously giving errors to check if the error persists.
See Also: Top 7 Ways To Fix err_cache_miss On Chrome

Change IP4DNS Address

For this solution, open the Network and Sharing Center using the network icon present in the system tray (it is ethernet the WiFi logo or the Ethernet connection logo). Open the properties section of your active connection by right-clicking on the connection and choosing ‘Properties.’ Follow these steps after that:

Browse through WiFi or Ethernet properties list to find and select the
“Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)” and click on its properties.
In this window, select the option- “Use the following DNS server addresses.”, And then in the two boxes that can be now edited give these two inputs-
For ‘Preferred DNS server’ give ‘8.8.8.8’ and ‘8.8.4.4’ for ‘Alternate DNS server.’
Choose the option called “Validate settings upon exit” at the bottom of the Window, before pressing ‘OK’ to exit.

Try using Chrome after restarting your computer with the new settings.

TCP/IP resetting

Now, this solution might seem a bit more complicated because of the use Command Prompt, but we will simplify your task but providing the exact commands that you will need to enter. Begin by opening the Command prompt with administrator rights (you will find it the Windows Start menu). Next, type each one of the following commands and press enter after each:

“ipconfig /release”
“ipconfig /all”
Now, “ipconfig /flushdns”
“ipconfig /renew”
“netsh int ip set dns”
“netsh winsock reset”

All in All, if these solutions do not work, then as a last resort, you can try Uninstalling and Re-installing the Google Chrome on your computer. Or, reset your Google Chrome Setting back to the default option using the “Reset all to default” that you will find the list of options once you type “chrome://flags/” in the address box of your Chrome (as discussed before). Or, But, one these solutions should solve the error problem, and you will be able to use your Chrome for visiting the website that was blocked. Hope you’ll will be able to solve “This site can’t be reached” issue now.