Overriding MSIE’s Friendly Error Message screens

IE overrides several HTTP error status pages but it has a size threshold. Only if the error page send by the server has a large enough body then IE decides it’s meaningful and displays it.

Usually to be safe you should make error pages that are larger then 512 bytes. The threshold varies per HTTP status code. You can look at what your thresholds are currently set to. In IE 5 and greater the settings are stored in the registry under [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\ErrorThresholds]

Err Size(bytes):

  • 400 512
  • 403 256
  • 404 512
  • 405 256
  • 406 512
  • 408 512
  • 409 512
  • 410 256
  • 500 512
  • 501 512
  • 505 512

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