timmcat, it used to be similar on my pc, I could never tell if a link was going to work, sometimes they did but mostly they did not.
Then back in Feb I think it was, many of us could not get into chat for a few weeks.
One of the measures I took to try and get into chat was to download the latest version of Java.
Since then links work all the time.
I don't know if that caused the improvement but it might be worth trying.