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I am unable to access Dropbox on Windows 10 desktop. I can do it on another Windows 10 computer as well as Android phone on the same Wi-Fi but not on this one desktop through two different ISPs.

Tried four different browsers, including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome and Edge. All the same failure talking about HSTS and unable to connect. No exceptions allowed nor connecting anyway after the “advanced” button.

I tried disabling AVG AntiVirus, it didn't make a difference. I'm assuming this is some Windows security thing? Or did all browsers all of a sudden change how they handle this. I have another machine with the same browsers and those work fine.

Firefox:

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Chrome:

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Internet Explorer:

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Edge:

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Giacomo1968
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prl77
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  • Sorry to hear about this. But have you looked at [this site](https://www.thesslstore.com/blog/clear-hsts-settings-chrome-firefox/)? – Giacomo1968 Dec 17 '20 at 01:21
  • *"I tried disabling AVG AntiVirus, it didn't make a difference. I'm assuming this is some Windows security thing?"* - HSTS is a browser thing. That is, it is a security feature (list of sites *requiring* HTTPS to connect) built into the browser. – Anaksunaman Dec 17 '20 at 03:25
  • what is the actual issue you are experiencing? the HSTS error should have more info. what browser? the page might have links with additional info. what is the link you are trying to access and what does your browser lock icon say? – Zina Dec 17 '20 at 13:28
  • @Zina , I just added screenshot links to the post – prl77 Dec 17 '20 at 22:40
  • @Giacomo1968 , I did but clearing it made no difference – prl77 Dec 17 '20 at 22:41
  • dropbox.com is not using a self-signed certificate, either your are connecting to a rogue site or you have some security software which is intercepting your https connections and replacing the certificate (commonly done in companies, so it might be a misconfiguration). if you click on the NET:ERR... error you should get more information... – Zina Dec 17 '20 at 23:28
  • @Zina Interesting. Just looked at the cert and it is self-signed by VMware. How odd. – prl77 Dec 18 '20 at 05:54
  • what about accessing other sites? are the certs also replaced? do you have installed something like fiddler (a web debugging proxy which intercepts all http/s traffic)? any other https inspection tool? is this a company computer? – Zina Dec 18 '20 at 08:54
  • @Zina It's a home computer, just purchased a few weeks ago. I tried other sites and all those certs seem legit from DigiCert, GeoTrust, Google Trust, Let's Encrypt, Microsoft. No self-signed anything anywhere else. I have VMware Workstation installed with a guest Windows 10 for testing and that one gets a real DigitCert for Dropbox. I've been using VMware Workstation for years and never seen such a problem but I will uninstall it just to cover all bases and see if anything changes. – prl77 Dec 18 '20 at 18:34
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    Thank you for your help, @Zina. You led me down the path to find the problem. After uninstalling VMware, dropbox.com would not respond to HTTP while all other sites were fine. That made me check the hosts file and sure enough, some P2P app I use entered a bunch of 127.0.0.1 hosts and for some reason included dropbox.com. So after clearing all that and disabling that particular P2P app feature, I can now access Dropbox just fine. Thank you again for your help. Your responses made me stick with it and check more and more things I would not have otherwise thought to check. – prl77 Dec 18 '20 at 19:10

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