A page that won’t load is one of the most common — and most fixable — frustrations online. The trick is to work through the possibilities in the right order, starting with the quick, likely fixes and only moving to the deeper ones if you need to. Here are twelve things to try, roughly from fastest to most involved. Most problems are solved long before you reach the bottom.

First, one crucial check

Before you change anything, find out whether the problem is even yours to fix. Look the site up on an independent status checker. If it’s down for everyone, stop here — none of the fixes below will help, and you just need to wait. If it’s up for everyone but not for you, keep reading; the fix is local.

1. Hard-refresh the page

Your browser stores a cached copy of pages to load them faster, but a stale cache can serve you a broken version. Force a fresh copy with Ctrl+F5 (Windows/Linux) or Cmd+Shift+R (Mac). This is the single most effective one-second fix.

2. Try an incognito or private window

A private window ignores your extensions and most cached data. If the site loads there, you’ve learned that a browser extension or your cache is the problem — not the site. That points you straight at fixes 3 and 4.

3. Clear your cache and cookies

If a hard refresh isn’t enough, clear the cached files and cookies for that specific site through your browser settings. Corrupted cookies in particular can cause endless login loops and pages that half-load and stall.

4. Disable extensions

Ad blockers, privacy tools, and VPN browser extensions occasionally block legitimate resources a page needs, leaving it broken or blank. Turn them off one at a time — or test in that incognito window — to find the culprit, then add an exception for the site.

5. Switch to a different network

Load the page on your phone using mobile data with Wi-Fi turned off. If it works on mobile data but not your home connection, the problem is your router, your ISP, or your DNS — not the website. This single test rules out a huge category of issues in seconds.

6. Restart your router and modem

The classic advice endures because it works. Unplug both your modem and router, wait a full 60 seconds (some devices need that long to fully reset), plug the modem back in first, let it reconnect, then power the router. A stale connection or a bad address assignment often clears with a proper power cycle.

7. Flush your DNS cache

Your device keeps its own cache of DNS lookups, and a stale or poisoned entry can route you to an old address or block a site entirely. Flushing it forces fresh lookups. On Windows, run ipconfig /flushdns in Command Prompt; on Mac, use sudo dscacheutil -flushcache in Terminal; on Linux, restart your resolver service.

8. Switch to a public DNS resolver

If your ISP’s DNS is slow, misconfigured, or blocking a site, changing resolvers can fix loading problems instantly. Point your network settings at Cloudflare (1.1.1.1) or Google (8.8.8.8). This is one of the highest-value fixes for the "only one site won’t load" situation, and it often speeds up browsing overall.

9. Check your date and time

It sounds trivial, but an incorrect system clock breaks the SSL certificate validation that secure sites depend on, producing security errors and refused connections. Make sure your device’s date, time, and time zone are set automatically and correctly.

10. Test with a VPN

If a site works on a VPN but not without one, the issue is likely with your ISP or with regional blocking rather than the site itself. Conversely, if you’re already using a VPN, try switching it off — some sites block traffic from VPN and datacenter addresses. Either result tells you something useful about where the block lives.

11. Try another device

Load the page on a completely different device on the same network. If your laptop fails but your tablet succeeds, the problem is specific to the first device — its browser, its settings, or its software — and you can focus your effort there instead of on the network.

12. Update your browser or reboot

An outdated browser can struggle with modern sites, and a full device restart clears a surprising range of temporary glitches in memory and networking. If you’ve worked through everything above, updating your browser and rebooting is the clean-slate move that resolves the stubborn remainder.

When none of it works

If you’ve tried everything and the page still won’t load, circle back to that first check. A site that’s genuinely down for everyone will not respond to any amount of local troubleshooting — and recognizing that is a fix in itself, because it tells you to stop tinkering and wait. Watch the live tracker: when user reports start falling, recovery is usually underway. You can also see whether related services are affected on the live outages page, or read our companion guide on why websites go down in the first place.

Keep the checklist handy

The reason this list works is its order: the fastest, most common fixes come first, so you rarely need the deeper ones. Bookmark it, and the next time a page hangs you’ll have a calm, methodical path from "why won’t this load?" to a working site — or to the confident knowledge that the ball is in the website’s court, not yours. And whenever you’re unsure which it is, a quick status check settles it.