CAPTCHA is used to prevent and filter automated bots and distinguish real humans from them to protect and fight against the unethical use of automated scripting, plugins, extensions, and browser add-ons to fill out forms and perform specific automated tasks and functions. CAPTCHA is simple yet powerful enough to help the developers, website owners, and organisations filter out and prevent unethical use of the website. Yet, some times it turns out to be a headache in the cases when the CAPTCHA fails to load and show.
CAPTCHA is being used everywhere be it Gmail, Sign up, login and registration forms, and including the (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation) IRCTC web-portal and in this post, we have included the solutions to help you in the cases when the IRCTC CAPTCHA fails to load or show even after you are on a high-speed Internet network.
The CAPTCHA may fail to load due to many reasons which could be:
- Internet issue at your Internet Service provider’s (ISP) end
- Ad-Blockers
- Caches and cookies
- Outdated web browsers
- IRCTC server issues
The solutions to the IRCTC Captcha is not loading or showing the problems are:
1. Internet issue at your Internet Service provider’s (ISP) end
IRCTC Captcha most likely will not load due to the issue at your Internet Service Provider’s end, mostly with the broadband providers, which could be MTNL, BSNL, Airtel, and other broadband providers, as well as other telecom users, which include Reliance Jio, Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea, etc.
There are two possible ways to diagnose if the issue is with your Internet service provider:
- Use the different Internet Service Provider, or
- Use VPN
You can ask your friend or any family member to share a hotspot and connect it via WiFi or USB cable, and if no such option is available, then you can try downloading VPN (virtual private network) software such as Hide.me and connecting to the VPN network to see if the captcha loads properly; otherwise, read the next solution.
2. Ad Blockers
Ad blockers help you get rid of the advertisements that appear on every other website that you visit and use. Still, on the other hand, it has several disadvantages for the users as well as the owner of these websites, as most of the sites, including Google, YouTube, and Facebook, are running just because of the ads that appear. When it comes to the users, the ad-blockers not only block the ads but sometimes even useful content, including the CAPTCHA.
It may be possible that CAPTCHA is not loading or showing because of the Adblocker plugin, extension, or add-on that you’ve installed on your browser, be it Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, or Microsoft Edge.
To diagnose if the issue is because of the adblocker, disable or remove the adblocker from your browser, restart the browser, and check if the problem has been resolved or not. If the problem has not been resolved, see the next solution.
3. Caches and cookies
Caches are used to store the static contents locally on your browser to help the websites to load faster where the cookies are used to store string values and information to identify the users and store login information etc. Sometimes, the Capatch may not load because of issues with the cookies and caches, as the Capatch is genuinely based on the cookies.
The best thing about the caches and cookies is that you can delete them without losing any data, but it may be possible that you have to re-login on the websites where you have logged in previously.
To delete and manage the cookies and caches on different browsers, you may follow these instructions:
If the issue has not resolved even after clearing and deleting the caches and cookies, you can try the next solution.
4. Outdated web browsers
It may be possible that you are using an outdated web browser to explore the Internet, which needs to be updated or upgraded to the latest version to resolve the issue with the CAPTCHA loading problem.
To check if your browser needs to be updated, go to:
- Update Google Chrome
- Update Mozilla Firefox to the latest release
- Update or reinstall Safari for your computer
If the issue has not resolved even after updating the browser, see the next solution.
5. IRCTC server issues
IRCTC is the world’s 300th-ranked website, which means it gets tonnes of traffic every second, which needs to be handled by a few hundred servers. It may be possible that the IRCTC servers are overloaded, which is the reason captcha is not loading or showing in your browser. In that case, you can either wait until the issue resolves itself or write to the support centre of the IRCTC, addressing the problem there.
Don’t be confused, as it may be possible that the website is opening without any issues. Still, the captcha isn’t showing, as it may be possible that the functionality of the captcha is being handled by that server, which is undergoing some maintenance or is overloaded.
