Today, there are many users of modern computer systems based on the Windows OS who are familiar with the concept of a proxy server or at least have heard about it. Let's see what it is and why there are situations when the proxy server is not responding.
What is a proxy server?
In simple terms, a proxy server is a specialized service that allows you to connect to the Internet or to a local network through the so-called indirect (indirect) requests.
In other words, the proxy server acts as a kind of intermediary between the user of the computer terminal and the requested resource. As already understood, it is not at all necessary that it is located on the World Wide Web. But very often you can meet the appearance of problems associated with the fact that the proxy server is not responding. Now we will consider the most frequently occurring situations and methods for their elimination.
Causes of Trouble
As a rule, the proxy server does not respond mainly when using incorrect settings. It would seem that the addresses are entered correctly, but at one point the connection stops working. Why?
This is often associated with incorrect or forced shutdown of Windows, for example, during a sudden power outage (in cases where there is no uninterruptible power supply unit), shutdown of some system services and applications when the "OS" hangs, etc. In such moments, proxy settings simply have the fly-off property. But you can fight this, and even very successfully.
In some cases, the problem that the proxy server is not responding may be due to its own performance. This can be temporary maintenance, software component updates, and more. And this is not to say that if the provider service does not provide connection services using a proxy, then it is generally completely pointless to configure its parameters.
The proxy server is not responding. What to do?
First, let's take a look at the basic proxy settings, which are called in the additional properties of the default Internet browser. For standard Internet Explorer or Edge (Windows 10), these settings are configured through the standard Control Panel.
We will assume that the provider still uses proxies. If the proxy server does not respond, Windows 7, for example, or any other modification simply does not recognize its actual address when trying to establish an intermediate connection.
What to do in this case? Yes, just enter the correct address values provided by the provider when connecting the terminal to a local network or the Internet.
About local networks should be said separately. The fact is that failures, even those when the proxy server does not respond, Windows 8 can also interpret in its own way. This, incidentally, applies to almost all recent versions of Windows, starting with XP. Note whether the proxy use option for local addresses is enabled. If there is a checkmark next to this item, it is strongly recommended to remove it. Quite often, the problem arises precisely because of this, since the system does not access the address of the proxy server itself, but the identifier of another machine connected to the local network. Although such addresses, in theory, have nothing in common, nevertheless, Windows OS of all versions are not protected from such failures.
Using anonymous proxies
With anonymous resources on the Internet, which are proxy servers that allow you to change or hide the real external IP address of a user’s computer while surfing the Web, the situation is somewhat different.
Here, mainly connection errors arise precisely due to problems of the resources themselves. Often this manifests itself in the fact that the browser displays a message that the timeout has expired (error 504 Gateway Timeout). It only means that the requested resource, capable of operating either as a proxy server or as a gateway, did not receive a response in time from a server located in the connection hierarchy above it.
Here you can do the simplest way - just refresh the page, and in a pinch (if you are sure of the resource’s health) just restart the system. Perhaps, sometimes it may require disabling the antivirus or firewall or adding the site itself to the exclusion list, because the antivirus and the firewall are capable of blocking some, in their opinion, suspicious sites.
Conclusion
In principle, we examined the most frequent situations and the simplest methods for correcting them, simply without going into the technical side of the issue. Separately, it is worth saying that in most cases the lack of connection with proxy servers is not associated with any critical violations in the operation of operating systems. Rather, it is a special case.
The whole point is not even in the user settings, but in the operability of the resources of this type, especially in the case of using anonymizers. Actually, as can be seen from the above material, the problems can be solved quite simply. Sometimes you just need to check if the network connection and Internet access is active, and it happens that the system tray icon shows that the connection is active, but in fact it is limited or not at all (most often with regard to connections based on Wi-Fi connections).