Windscribe VPN Proxy Error on Chrome

Nowadays, there are so many free VPN's to use- Windscribe is one such VPN.

I had an issue I recently resolved for a user where Chrome was causing this proxy pop-up to come up, only on the user's work profile. The issue didn't happen with Edge, nor with Chrome Incognito or other Chrome profiles.

Changing the Wifi connection didn't work, neither did being logged in on the Windscribe VPN client.

There is a support article from Windscribe on this issue:

Here is what you can try to fix this issue, however, none of their solutions worked. Pressing cancel would just have it go back to a blank page.

1. Press Cancel on the dialog. You can read the explanation at the bottom to see why this helps.
2. Turn off/disconnect the Windscribe extension before closing the browser.
3. Do not restore opened tabs when browser is opened. If you are using chrome, you can go to "chrome://settings/" from your browser, scroll to the bottom where it says "On startup", then select "open the new tab page".
4. If you are using Firefox, please go into Firefox Options. Advanced (from the gray bar on the left), and then Network tab. Click on "Settings..." button. You should see that its set to "Automatic proxy configuration URL". Change this to "use system proxy settings" and click OK. If that doesn't solve the issue, change it to "No proxy".

Resolution:

Ultimately, the resolution was to specifically be logged into the Chrome extension on the profile having the issue. Whether the user is logged into the application or not seems to make no difference.

The Windscribe support article states the issue happens because "it may not have enough time to initialize all the extensions (especially if you have a lot installed) because "a page is trying to load (and therefore is trying to use the proxy settings) before the Windscribe extension had a chance to fully launch. In that case, authentication is not handled automatically and you are prompted for the credentials. This is done to prevent your IP from leaking when the browser starts up."

It makes sense that the issue is either the Windscribe extension not being launched, or also in cases where the extension is not logged into at all, it still conflicts.