400 Bad Request/Bad File Request

Web errors offer little information as to why they happen and what to do to fix them. Moreover, any information they do offer can be quite cryptic and mired in technical jargon, usually undecipherable to the common user.

A common web error is the “400 Bad Request/Bad File Request” as it can often come from minor mistakes in the web address or the Uniform Resource Locator, URL. For many web servers, the URL must be exactly accurate in order to reach the page that is requested. The error will occur if there is an error in the spelling of the URL, including case sensitive characters. This means that all of the capital and lowercase letters in the intended URL must be the same as what the user enters into the address bar.

Essentially, what the 400 Bad Request is telling you is that there is some part of the URL that has been entered incorrectly. The web server hosting the site cannot find what you have requested. This gives the error the name of “Bad Request.” If you are entering a specific file path or name and have entered it incorrectly, you may get the “Bad File Request.” In fact, all 400 series of errors imply that the issue is with the user and so the solution must be with the user as well.

This can be difficult with longer URL addresses as many have long complicated strings of seemingly unrelated letters. Try to use hyperlinks directly by clicking on them wherever possible or by copying links and pasting them into the address bar instead of recalling them from memory, especially if they are these kinds of long complicated URLs.

The wrong punctuation can also cause this error as the web server hosting the page or file you are trying to access will read punctuation as letters. Keep in mind that these are considered letters in many different areas of computing.

Finally, you may not be authorized to view the specific file that you are attempting to access. However, in this case, you will usually receive a very specific 400 error message that states “403 Forbidden/Access Denied,” which refer specifically to this instance.