Try/Catch with jquery ajax request

Question

I am trying to build a Google Chrome extension that makes an ajax request. Something similar to the GMail Checker extension. The problem is that when I do the request using jquery, and I put in the wrong username/password, it fails silently, with the error callback function ignored.

If I move the ajax call out of the background.html script (where I can't see the requests in the developer window), to the options.html script, I get a dialog box to re-authenticate. If I hit cancel, THEN the jquery error callback fires.

But in the original model extension (again, the Gmail checker), they use plain (non-jquery) ajax calls with a try/catch, and if I put in the wrong credentials, I get an alert saying as much.

I tried wrapping the entire jquery call in a try/catch, like so:

try {
    $.ajax({
        type: "POST",
        url: someurl,
        contentType : "text/xml",
        data: somedata,
        username: user,
        password: pass,
        success: function(data,status,xhr){
            alert("Hurrah!");
        },
        error: function(xhr, status, error){
            alert("Error!" + xhr.status);
        },
        dataType: "xml"
    });
} catch(e) {
    alert("You messed something up!");
}

But still nothing.

Is the error due to it being asynchronous, or is Chrome not returning the request as an error since it wants to re-prompt for credentials? Or do I just not know how to use try/catch?

Update

Here is a very slimmed down version of how the model code does the request:

var req = new XMLHttpRequest();
req.onreadystatechange = function() {
    try {
        if ( req.readyState == 4 ) {
            //Do some stuff with results
        }
    }
    catch (ex) {
        alert('Error parsing response.');
    }
}
try {
    req.send (data);
}
catch (ex) {
    alert ('Something went wrong with the request.');
}