Clearing cache forces you into the 9th circle of Jira hell

[Derek Williams]

I just spent the last hour trying to log back into Jira after I had to clear my browser's cache. This is the 2nd time this has happened to me in the last 6 months. Fortunately I've only had to clear my browser cache those 2 times in 6 months. But this is ridiculous. It started with:

Oops, you've made a malformed request.

Often, clearing your browsers cache and restarting your browser will solve this problem.
If that doesn't work, please contact support.

and following the instructions didn't do a damn thing. I tried in a different browser multiple times, finally got logged in using Firefox, then went back to Chrome, tried again with what I had verified was a valid password, still no dice, then tried resetting the password and still couldn't log in. Tried to access support, but lo and behold you have to log in to be able to access support, well I CAN'T FREAKING LOG IN, HOW THE HELL AM I SUPPOSED TO GET SUPPORT???!!!!, Back to the drawing board, googling and trying possible solutions, got random nonce authentication failed messages and FINALLY, FINALLY found the "Account Recovery" link. That one only took 3 times before it finally worked. What a joke! God forbid anyone ever has to clear their browser cache. If you do, just prepare yourself for an hour's worth of back and forth and hair-pulling frustration before you can ever log back in, at least if you use Chrome. And who the hell knows what steps I went through to pull myself out of hell? It was far too many for me to remember what the correct steps were. So if anyone here has memorized Dante's steps out of Jira purgatory, please document them here so I don't have to go through this again.

[Dario B]

Hi @Derek Williams ,

I totally understand you found yourself in a very very frustrating situation that leaves you stuck in a deadlock situation:

1. you cannot login
2. the error message tells you to open a support request
3. in order to open a support request you have to log-in (back to step #1) 

Therefore, let me try to provide the possible cause for your issue as well as a more generic way to approach this kind of unpleasant situation (that should work in any case).

From what you are describing in above post, the issue you faced seems to be the one described in the below article:

• Something went wrong in Google Chrome

The above article was provided to many customers facing similar issues and it always worked. 

Of course I cannot be 100% sure this would have helped you as well since, by reading your post, there are some things that seems to confirm this is the same issue while others seems to go opposite direction.

However, the fact that you were still unable to log-into Chrome after being able to log-in using Firefox with the exact same credentials and the fact that the account recovery link didn't work the first 2 attempts are all evidence pointing to a local browser issue.

Finally, in order to provide a more generic approach (in case you will find yourself in this situation again and the provide article does not work), please follow below steps:

• Make sure you are using the right credentials by trying to log-in using an incognito window as well as different browsers
•  If you are able to log-in using another browser, no need to reset the password or use the account recovery link. The problem is browser related. Clean all the local data (chrome profile) and retry
• If you are still unable to log-in, then in an incognito window:
  1. go to id.atlassian.com and click on "Can't log in?" (or go directly to https://id.atlassian.com/login/resetpassword)
  2.  Enter your email address in the form and click on "Send recovery link"
  3. In the received email you have a link to access and a link to reset the password. Use the one to access and see if it works
  4. If not even this works, go to https://status.atlassian.com/ and check if there is any active incident that may be causing your issue.

I hope this helps.

Cheers,
Dario