I’ve got a technical issue with my iPad, and am looking for ideas.  Starting this afternoon, I am unable to access MSN from my iPad.  It’s not account specific - I can’t access any aspect of MSN - even their help center.  It’s an issue primarily because all of our documents are stored on Onedrive, so I can’t retrieve or save them.

As near as I can tell, it’s specific to my iPad.  Rachael can still access MSN through her iPad, and each of us can access it through our Android cellphones.  And it doesn’t appear to be a software version issue, because both Rachael’s and my iPads are on the latest release and have the same settings.  So our documents are still accessible fortunately, but not directly by me - she or I can access them through one of the other devices and mail it to me so I can store a copy, but that’s obviously awkward and won’t hold up well over time.

I’ve tried the obvious remedies and everything I’ve read as a suggestion.  I’ve rebooted the iPad several times, uninstalled and reinstalled Onedrive, removed my email account, deleted my browsing history.  Nothing works.  Any attempt to access MSN - directly through Either Safari or Chrome, or to sign in to my account through one of the MSN apps on the device - has the same result - the app hangs, and eventually times out with the error “The network request timed out. Please try again. [2602]”

Any ideas?  The only other thing I can think of is to perform a factory reset on the iPad, which I’d of course only do as a last resort.

1) Do you by chance run any kind of VPN software? If so, you could try temporarily turning that off to see if it made a difference.

2) Has this been happening when you're connected to one specific wifi network? If so, you could try telling your iPad to forget that network and reconnect, or even better try from a different wifi network. 

Seems like if it's failing from both a browser and the MS apps directly, that it's some sort of networking issue connecting the the Microsoft servers.

That’s so funny, Bob.  I knew I could count on you.  I woke up this morning to a dream that you had responded to this post and explained what the problem was.  Thanks!

You might have seen by now that the issue mysteriously went away sometime during the night.  So that’s wonderful of course.  Regarding your questions though.  Recently Rachael just a few days ago installed VPN on her iPad, in response to our credit card hack.  It hasn’t been installed on mine, but our devices are linked so perhaps there’s something there.  As far as networks - we’ve gone back and forth between using our hotspot and the network provided by our host here in Santillana del Mar.  I don’t remember for sure, but I think both were in use at different times while I had this problem, but I’m not sure.  Thanks for the thought though.  If this ever happens again we’ll experiment with that.  and I think you’re right that it was some sort of connectivity issue.  But why now, and only on my iPad specifically?  I feel persecuted.

In case someone comes here in the future trying to resolve the same issue, I wanted to document that we’ve had similar problems.   Only 3 or 4 times in all of our travels, we’ve encountered a WiFi network that would exhibit the problem Scott has documented.   The problem appears to be with the WiFi network configuration, and nothing we’ve tried has fixed the problem.  So Scott, it’s not you.  It’s THEM!

If you can’t reach websites that you usually use and are receiving error messages reporting “time outs” or with the letters “DNS” in them, odds are that the WiFi network is misconfigured.  The solution is to connect to another network.

So try going to a nearby cafe.  Or try using your phone as a hotspot (Caution: Data roaming charges might apply if you do this).  

While it’s theoretically possible to fix the misconfigured WiFi network, getting your poor host to do it is unlikely to happen.  They were likely not the person who set it up in the first place, and they’re probably just as helpless as you are.   And you want to spend your time on more important things, right? :)

For those of a technical bent, I’ll add that in my opinion, these networks were likely set up by someone who thought they were smarter than they really were.  I think the issue has to do with overriding default DNS resolution in the router.  

I hope this helps someone down the line

Thanks for the suggestion, Rich.  I can’t really remember now if we tried changing networks to use our hotspot, but I know I was on it the next morning.  I think I might remember this.