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Every time I try to follow a link to social.technet.microsoft.com in Chrome (my default browser), the request is blocked by your server, returning the following (with a randomly generated error ref):
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC '-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN' 'http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd'><html xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'><head><meta content='text/html; charset=utf-8' http-equiv='content-type'/><style type='text/css'>body { font-family:Arial; margin-left:40px; }img { border:0 none; }#content { margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto }#message h2 { font-size: 20px; font-weight: normal; color: #000000; margin: 34px 0px 0px 0px }#message p { font-size: 13px; color: #000000; margin: 7px 0px 0px 0px }#errorref { font-size: 11px; color: #737373; margin-top: 41px }</style><title>Microsoft</title></head><body><div id='content'><div id='message'><h2>The request is blocked.</h2></div><div id='errorref'><span>0aNHKYwAAAACDRzz724XdSqLb247iVHmOU0pDRURHRTA1MTcANGY5MGZlNjktNjI3YS00MGUxLWIwNzMtZTRlYWQ1ZDhlNjU4</span></div></div></body></html>
What is the deal? Why is your server blocking these requests?
OK - apparently comment replies (to posted responses) don't show here, so come clarification: this is not an issue on the browser end. The request REACHES the server, which returns a 403 code along with that error reference. The question is WHY is the server (and if it's not hosted directly by Microsoft, it is most definitely on the microsfot.com domain, and as such SOMEONE should be responsible for making sure the site loads on the most popular browser out there...) blocking the request. I'd be happy to direct my concern to the correct support person, but since that's not readily available information... ;)
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OK - WTH is going on? I was trying to post this question in the forum at social.technet.microsoft.com where I might solicit an answer, but it redirects me to learn.microsoft.com and post my question in some Windows Q&A thing, and NOT in the forum.
This part was solved by TP below! That site has been replaced by the Q&A pages at learn.microsoft.com, which I why it was redirecting me there.
Hi,
The only reason to go to those forums is to read old posts. The forums over there have been read-only for years now. This (Microsoft Q & A) site is the correct place to ask technical questions regarding most (not all) Microsoft products/services now.
I use Chrome and have no problem reading posts. If you attempted somehow to post a new question or similar over in the old forums site then it is expected for you to get an error. If you want to provide the URL you were attempting to access, exactly how (e.g. clicked a link from google search or other website) then I will see if I can figure out what is happening.
-TP
Hi TP - Ok, the "archival" aspect makes sense as to why I get redirected to the Q&A pages when I try to post something.
Regarding the old forum pages - I am following links from Google search results (which I use often when developing and hit a wall). In fact, even if I try to go to the domain root ([https://social.technet.microsoft.com/) I get the "The request is blocked." message. Extensions are disabled. VPN is off. I even tried in an Incognito tab and I still can't get through!
And I can get around it via other browsers, etc. - it's just frustrating to break out of my typical workflow and have to switch in order to follow certain links. ;) Thanks for the reply!
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