Lately my desktop Windows 10 machine has been taking a long time to establish an Internet connection after it's booted up, with AVG Secure Browser showing this message:
DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG
That error is followed by some suggestions:
Check your DNS settings
Contact your network administrator if you're not sure what this means.
Try disabling network prediction
Go to the AVG Secure Browser menu > Settings > Show advanced settings… and deselect "Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly." If this does not resolve the issue, we recommend selecting this option again for improved performance.
THE TROUBLE IS, these menu selections do not exist in full:
"AVG Secure Browser menu > Settings > Show advanced settings… and deselect "Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly."
"
1) First problem: there are at least TWO menus I can find on the browser, one under the four-color flag icon-looking thing at upper right of the browser, and another under the three vertical dots mystery icon next to the four-color flag. Only the three vertical dots mystery icon menu though has a 'Settings' option however, so I assume that's the one to use at this juncture down the rabbit hole.
2) Under that 'Settings' menu there is no 'Show advanced settings' option, although at the very bottom there is the word 'Advanced' with a triangle next to it suggesting something might happen if it is clicked on, and it does! Close enough, I figure. And there's nothing else even close. When clicked, more menu items appear that begin with 'privacy and security' which seems to be what the under-the-four-color-flag-mystery-icon more or less also leads to, but in a different style leading to confusion about whether the functionality is all duplicated or different somehow. Neither seem to be about DNS settings or anything related though so I put that aside for the moment and just hope that I never have to deal with figuring out what the differences might be between them.
3) Dead stop. The instructions to 'deselect "Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly."' lead to nowhere, as there is no such option to either select or deselect.
So, after having gone through this loop countless times hoping it will eventually fix itself and go away as mysteriously as it came, tonight I admit defeat and instead create an account at avg.com and validate my email and then I find out I'm already logged in, except OOPS apparently I'm not logged in to support.avg.com and so I do that, with near-blinding astonishment that it actually worked the first time, and here I am! It's been a lot of work, so I hope by doing so that some answer can be found as to how I might locate that "Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly."' option and maybe stop this DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG error from showing every single time I boot up my machine and load the AVG browser.
We request you to get into settings of AVG secure browser and select Advanced–>Privacy & Security".
Check whether you see any option as "Preload pages for faster browsing and searching". If yes, that should be the option that it was referring earlier.
If the same error appears again, do take a screenshot of it and contact us immediately.
Hello Karl,
Thank you for sharing this and glad to know that your issue has been resolved now.
May I ask whether this "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG" error appeared for a particular website or any site that you tried to access via AVG secure browser?
We request you to refer this FAQ and follow the steps as mentioned under "Manage secure browser settings" where it shows screenshots of settings page with "Advanced" option in it.
Do you confirm that did you get the steps to get into AVG secure browser settings and turn off "Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly" ?
If so, does it appear as soon as you received the "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG" error?
Hello Karl,
Thank you for sharing this and glad to know that your issue has been resolved now.
May I ask whether this "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG" error appeared for a particular website or any site that you tried to access via AVG secure browser?
We request you to refer this FAQ and follow the steps as mentioned under "Manage secure browser settings" where it shows screenshots of settings page with "Advanced" option in it.
Do you confirm that did you get the steps to get into AVG secure browser settings and turn off "Use a prediction service to load pages more quickly" ?
If so, does it appear as soon as you received the "DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG" error?
"Preload pages for faster browsing and searching" is toggled Off and locked Off because of the presence of the 'AVG Anti-Tracking Extension'. Is that the way it should be? Because I can't change it, unless I uninstall the extension of course. And I get the idea from the way you kinda hinted about it that it should be Off anyway.
Since nothing has changed, the error will continue: DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_BAD_CONFIG