§ Fixes
ChatGPT problems: the symptom table
Login, loading, uploads, voice, wrong answers, lost context, billing: a chatpt.chat symptom table, with the first fix. Nine symptoms, one table.
Most “ChatGPT is broken” moments are one of nine things. Find your row, take the first move, and stop before you clear every cookie on your machine.
| What you see | What it usually is | First move |
|---|---|---|
| Cannot sign in, wrong password, “wrong authentication method” | The sign-in route does not match how the account was created | Login problems, by error message |
| Site will not load, spinner, “at capacity” | Service load or an outage | Outage or your browser |
| Reply stops mid-sentence | Connection drop, tab sleep, or a long generation | Reload the thread, ask it to continue. If it repeats, start a new thread. |
| Answer is wrong or out of date | Normal model failure, or the search tool did not run | Ask for sources, open them; ask it to mark claims that came from outside your message. How to brief it |
| It forgot what you told it | Long thread, new chat, memory off, or custom instructions missing | Why it forgets |
| File upload fails | File type, size, or a flaky connection | Try a smaller file of a supported type. If that works, it is the file. |
| Voice mode will not start | Microphone permission or platform support | Check OS permissions, then try the mobile app. |
| The app crashes or will not update | App build, OS version, or store cache | Update, reinstall, check the store listing is published by OpenAI. |
| Charged for something you did not buy | Billing, not product | Contact OpenAI support through the help centre. There is no legitimate third-party billing fix. |
Before you change anything
Three checks that cost two minutes and save an hour:
- Look at the URL. Is it exactly
chatgpt.com? A lookalike is not a bug in the product; it is a different site. - Check the status page. status.openai.com. An active incident means wait, not troubleshoot.
- Try one other device on a different network. Phone on cellular is the fastest way to separate “my setup” from “the service”.
If all three come back normal and the failure repeats, you have a real problem worth solving. If one of them changes the result, you already know which layer to fix.
The two failures we will not help you work around
- Account recovery. Only OpenAI can restore an account. Anyone offering to do it for a fee is not able to.
- Bypassing limits or paywalls. There is no setting, extension, or “mod” that reliably does this, and the downloads that claim to are the most common way people lose accounts.
We will happily show you how to get more out of the tier you have. That is a different thing, and it is what most of this site is about.
When the problem is the answer, not the app
If the site loads and the reply is just bad, you are not in a bug. You are in the normal failure mode of a language model. Three habits fix most of it:
- give it the source instead of asking it to remember one
- ask it to label what it added
- start a fresh thread when the conversation has drifted
That is the prompting guide, and it is a better use of ten minutes than any troubleshooting list.
Related
- Locked out? Work the list in order
- Outage or your browser?
- chatpt is a typo — why “ChatPT login” and “ChatPT download” are not things
- Open the workbench — get back to the task
Common questions
ChatGPT is down — what should I do?
Check status.openai.com, then try another network and a private window before changing anything on your device.
Why does it say I am at capacity?
Demand has outpaced capacity for your plan or region. Wait and retry later; there is no bypass setting.
Can I recover my account myself?
Only OpenAI can restore an account. Use the official help centre and never pay a third party for recovery.
Sources
Official pages, accessed 2026-10-31. Not tested: We did not reproduce every symptom. Rows that depend on plan or platform say so.