While using the Microsoft object Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP with Classic ASP we experienced some strange errors when sending an XML HTTP request. These are three different errors that were received when sending the request:
msxml3.dll error ’80072efe’ The connection with the server was terminated abnormally. msxml3.dll error ’80072f78′ The server returned an invalid or unrecognized response. msxml3.dll error ’800c0008′ The download of the specified resource has failed.
The errors were only being thrown in the production environment.
The version of the Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP object is usually identified as the problem for these errors, but in this case we knew that the same object had been used for multiple projects without a problem:
<% Set xmlHttp = Server.CreateObject(“Msxml2.ServerXMLHTTP.3.0″) xmlHttp.Open “GET”, url, false xmlHttp.Send() httpResponseText = xmlHttp.ResponseText %>
In this case we were communicating with the Flickr API and the code ran correctly in our development environment and on other websites. This suggested problems with our or Flickr’s firewall. It turned our that Flickr was blocking the IP address range of the company that the website was hosted by. After contacting Flickr the block on the IP address range was removed and the code executed without any errors!
This will not be the solution for everyone but if your code is not running in your production environment, and it does in your development environment, then Firewall rules could be the cause of the problem.