see attached screenshot.

Note the text in the box, about cookies expiring. No idea if its relevant.

I have tried changing my encoding. so far no success in stopping this. a page refresh then loads the page normally.

Is it me? is it my ISP? what can i do to stop this annoying thing?

btw, it happens on both my xp netbook and vista laptop

I am unable to read the text in the picture but can see the "Gobbledygook"

Are you using Internet Explorer when this happens?? Tried Mozilla?

The Cookie header looks OK, sets a cookie to track your session, expiry date is 1 year.

A caching proxy server shows up, but reports a 'miss', meaning you don't get a cached result but the original requested from the server. Which is again OK, since the page is tagged as 'no-cache' which is standard for dyamic pages.

Might be a problem with the gzip filter. This technique allows the server to pack the content of the response just like a zip packer application does with files. The browser unzips the content and then processes the page. This usually speeds up things on slow connections or for pages with loads of content.

If the browser cannot unzip the content it might have the effect that you see. The zipped content is a binary file and hence if something goes wrong you see garbled mess.

I am not 100% sure why there is garbled text before the response header...

Another possible explanation is that something between server and web browser causes the data in the response to corrupt, and then the zipped content cannot be extracted.

There is a long chain of components involved, so you better try to exchange one component at a time and see if the situation improves:

for instance: browser, browser plugins, firewall software, network components (switch), router, ...

It might as well be a problem with your provider...

welo

I am unable to read the text in the picture but can see the "Gobbledygook"

Are you using Internet Explorer when this happens?? Tried Mozilla?

as per topic title firefox 3.6.

it happened before the latest update as well but i will give all options as listed by welo a try before I shoot myself in the head

Check first if the same problem occurs with IE as well.

Might be some Firefox plugin - do you have any additional plugins installed? - try disable them (run Firefox Safe Mode from the Start Menu)

Or maybe antivirus web filter interfering. Most antivirus software allows you to disable the web filter without affecting the guard/shield.

What security software do you have installed (anitvirus, malware shields, personal firewalls?)

Pls report if it's Firefox specific. Of course this might imply that you switch to a different browser for a certain period of time - how often does the page load error show up?

Not sure it's the gzip filter - I messed around with the related setting in Firefox and I always get the entire page scrambled, never the response header to show up inside the content frame like on your screenshot?

The screenshot you posted, is it a straight screenshot of your web browser?

welo