Fix: YouTube Error 400 and Blank Google Maps in Chrome

When you visit YouTube.com, you may encounter error 400 — “Your client has issued a malformed or illegal request. Error 400 (Bad Request) status code indicates that the server cannot or will not process the request due to something that is perceived to be a client error (e.g., malformed request syntax, invalid request message framing, or deceptive request routing).

youtube error 400 bad request in google chrome

Similarly Google Maps may show up empty when using Google Chrome web browser.

google maps blank -- delete gsscrollpos and google.com cookies

Fix: Error 400 on Youtube website in Google Chrome

To workaround the error 400 on youtube.com, use these steps:

  1. Open the Cookies settings page by launching chrome://settings/content/cookies and clicking “See all cookies and site data”. Alternately, in recent versions of Chrome, you can open the Cookies and Site data page directly by visiting chrome://settings/siteData
  2. Type youtube.com in the search box, and then click “REMOVE ALL SHOWN” link to delete all youtube.com cookies.
    youtube error 400 bad request in google chrome
  3. Also, search for “gScrollPos” and delete all cookies prefixed with “gScrollPos”.

Apparently the gsScrollPos-#### cookies were added by The Great Suspender extension. This extension is used to suspend unused tabs to free up system resources automatically. 



Another workaround — using Chrome Developer Tools

  • Visit youtube.com. If you get the error 400, open Developer Tools by pressing Ctrl + Shift + i or the F12 key.
  • In the Developer Tools pane, select the Application tab.
  • In the left side of the Developer Tools window, expand “Cookies” and then select youtube.com.
  • The right side of the developer pane will show all Youtube cookies. Delete all cookies by clicking the “Clear all” button at the top of the Developer Tools window.
    youtube error 400 google chrome developer tools clear cookies
  • Refresh the page. YouTube should now work again.

Blank Google Maps issue

The same workaround should also help for “blank Google Maps” issue. However, in that case, you need to delete google.com and gsScrollPos cookies via Chrome Settings.

If nothing helps, disable your Chrome Extensions one at a time to test; one of them may be the culprit.


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Ramesh Srinivasan is passionate about Microsoft technologies and he has been a consecutive ten-time recipient of the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award in the Windows Shell/Desktop Experience category, from 2003 to 2012. He loves to troubleshoot and write about Windows. Ramesh founded Winhelponline.com in 2005.

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