Fix the Browser Time-Out Problem

We have received a few emails from applicants experiencing trouble submitting their application and receiving the message that their “session has expired.”    We believe this problem is related to the “time-out setting” on your  browser. Most web browsers seem have a “time-out” or “keep-alive” parameter of a few minutes. This means that if there is no network traffic between your device and the web page on the server, the browser will automatically break the connection.

The easiest way to solve this problem, is to answer all of the questions in a word document first and then cut and paste your answers into the online form quickly so that you do not experience any lag time.

If the cut-and paste solution that we suggest doesn’t work for you, you can try a more involved solution by actually modifying your browser time-out.  Here are instructions for three of the main browsers:

For the Internet Explorer Web Browser:

Here is a fix to change the IE timeout to 5 minutes.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/181050

For the FireFox Web Browser: 

In FireFox

1. Type about:config in the address bar.
2. You’ll see a list of preferences; in the search bar type network.http.response to find the timeout parameter
3. Double click on the Value,  and change it to 600 in the dialog box.   Click OK.

For the Google Chrome Web Browser:

The “Staying Alive” extension is available for Google Chrome.

One other thing to try –  just switch browsers. FireFox and Chrome seem to be most reliable.

Finally,  we haven’t found solutions for Safari (yes, on the Mac), or Microsoft Edge (for Windows 10). Still having problems? Give us a shout at [email protected].

Save

Save