There are many reasons for this error message which unfortunately has become somewhat generic.  Roughly translated it means "I dunno what the hell is wrong, I'm running ok elsewhere, it's just the request you made has confused the doo out of me so I'm throwing this one up to torture your support team".

So where do you go from here?  Your getting the error and you want it fixed, is it the script writers fault or my host?

There are three general areas to look at, the script, the host sever, and the operating environment (access between your browser and the web server).

The Script

As the script is running on many machines and to date has not found a public hosting environment that it cannot operate on it is unlikely to be a coding issue.  However a damaged file or a change to the application loaders such as ioncube or zend may cause this error.  So if you think it maybe a script issue check with your host that the ioncube or zend installation has not been changed recently.  If it has then none of your site will work correctly and you will see this error message on every page.  If you are only seeing it on a single page try uploading a copy from a working backup or the original installation files.

The Hosting Server

There are numerous areas on the server that will cause this error.  The main ones are:-

• httpd/IIS the web server software.  There are many reasons why the web server causes this issue.  With IIS your host may need to recycle the memory pool and if it happens frequently they may need to adjust pool parameters.  Apache (httpd) will throw this error for far too many reasons to list but the most common is a misconfigured http.conf file.  Unfortunately only your host can handle these errors.
• .htaccess misonfiguration.  You can think of the .htaccess as a user configurable extension to httpd.conf, if you have made a modification to the .htaccess file sometimes you will see this error.
• mode_security and other settings.  If you have a neurotic host check what settings they have in mod_security.  If they have limited URL to 500 characters and you have 501 characters in your link then it will throw this error. 

The Operating Environment

This error is not limited to the web server where you have your site, if you use a proxy for example the traffic flows between you and your host via a third party server.  This is the easiest to detect and fix.  Remove the proxy from your browser, if that fixes it then contact the proxy administrator and let them know.  Many of the "anonymous proxy" services are over used and do not have the resources to handle all requests.

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