193868 - download manager - file ... could not be opened because an unknown error occurred

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: Download & File Handling, defect)

Description

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030217
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.3b) Gecko/20030217

I'm downloading exe files.  Download manager automatically puts files in
xxxxx\user\LOCAL~1\TEMP\filename  - resulting in "xxxx\file could not be opened
because an unknown error occurred. Try saving to disk first and then opening the
file."  Similarities to bug 166369 and bug 153400 (which are marked MAC only)

If instead I right click and do "save link target as" then all is well.  I get
prompted with a window to supply the download directory and file name. 

This is the way it used to work, i.e. prompt, with default location of "My
Downloads".  I don't recall when and at what mozilla build level this changed
for me.  First noticed problem with Gecko/20030131.   Very annoying.  Is this an
XP setting problem or mozilla?

prefs set to "open download manager"

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[Marc]

I am seeing this, too and find it extremely annoying. 
My biggest problem is that the workaround "right click and do save link target
as" does not work when the download target is not directly linked but instead is
a redirection. For example the downloads at "download.com" work like this. I
have not yet found a way to download from there.

Comment 2

[u63580]

This is still about in 1.4b (Windows 2000)

Comment 3

[Marc]

It works for me now. 
I believe that this is not really a pure Mozilla problem but a combination of
WinNT/2000/XP-user-management/Mozilla/human-user behaviour. The problem on my
Win2000 machine was that I installed and configured Mozilla with my first
Win2000 user account but afterwards our system administrators added a new user
account (and thus a new "C:\Documents and Settings\username_new" directory)
which I am using almost all the time now. Mozilla afterwards saved its
configuration files and cache and so on partly in the first and partly in the
second "Documents and Settings" directory or at least tried to do so. I guess
that  also the download to the temporary directory failed for exe files because
of the fact that depending on your rights (administrator or not) you sometimes
can't write into other user's directories. 
However, I completely deleted both directories "C:\Documents and
Settings\user_1\Application Data\Mozilla" and "C:\Documents and
Settings\user_2\Application Data\Mozilla" and set up a completely new Mozilla
profile purely for one of my accounts. Now it works.

Comment 4

[u63580]

Tried Marc's idea (new profile) which solves the problem in a way.  It seems
that newer Mozilla builds don't try to open .exe's directly, as they don't have
a "open with default application" option.  So in a new profile, the only option
is to save, which works fine.  The same effect can be brought about by removing
the octet-stream item from the helper applications preferences.  This forces
Mozilla to ask next time it downloads an exe.

Comment 5

[William Springer]

I've been having the same problem, in 1.4b and the new version, and possible 1.3
as well (I forget).  Whenever I try to download an .exe it gives me that error
message, and I have to do the "save link" to get it to work.  I'm using Win98.

Comment 6

[Peter Kirk]

Bug 205924 seems to be a duplicate of this. So does bug 154523 comment #3,
indeed perhaps all of bug 154523 is a duplicate.

I get the same behaviour in Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US;
rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 on Windows 2000, running with administrator privileges on
a  stand-alone system so it's not a permissions issue. In my case, the file has
actually been downloaded into the location specified, my regular TEMP directory,
and when I find it with Explorer and double click on it it executes normally.
When I right click and download into exactly the same TEMP directory and then
when the download is complete click on Launch File, it also runs normally. So I
don't think this can be a Windows problem, it must be a Mozilla one.

Joseph's tip is at least useful, because it makes me save the file to a 
specified place and launch it from there the first time, without wasting time
and bandwidth downloading it the first time in vain.

Comment 7

[muchan (M. Nomura)]

I was the reporter of #205924 and Peterdirected me here.

My work around is in Windows Explorer, make both directories,
the one where Mozzila saves, and the one where I want it to be,
as "Favorite"... and immediately I see the error message,
go to former and copy the most recent file there to the latter...

Kind of user-side patching...

Thank you.

muchan

Comment 8

[Marc]

I encountered the same problem also on my WinXP machine and now I also think
it's not a permission problem as I said in comment #3. 
However, Joseph's solution in commment #4 seems to work. In
Preferences->Navigator->HelperApplications I just set the action for
"application/octet-stream" to "Save it to disk" and "Always ask..." and that
solves the problem (once again for me at least on this machine).

Comment 9

[Adler Rothschild]

I am getting the same error on two machines,  Both runing XP.  My work around is
to leave the error message up. go to the temp file where the .EXE file is saved
and either move the file or execute it from the temp file. Their is nothing
wrong with the file. 
Mozilla 1.4 through 1.5b
Reproducable Always
1. click on open file. download manager pops up.
after file is downloaded error message pops up.

Comment 10

[Tom Schneider]

This happens for me on MacOSX 10.2.8 with pdf files.
The one that just failed for me now is:

http://www.environmentaldefense.org/documents/2991_DrivingForward_Summer03.pdf

Seems to me that a smarter solution would be to at least switch
to a download mode and ask the user.  I've had 15 minute loads
FAIL!  This is pretty annoying ...

Comment 11

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

*** Bug 205924 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 12

[Aaron Lawrence]

Sounds like it is a real problem - confirming...

Comment 13

[Mr. Moose]

I've noticed this bug also.  I don't get it 100% of the time, but periodically
(though today is 100%).  It cropped up for me in the last week or two.

In the same directory where I'm saving the file I get file.exe.part that gets
left in the directory after it tells me that it can't save the file.  This
differs with the behavior of others system where they have to fetch the temp
file for the TEMP directory.  I re-do the download and after a second or two, it
tells me that the file.exe has completed downloading.

I don't know if this adds to conversation, but it is something that I've noticed.

Comment 14

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

I haven't seen this in ages. Anyone else?

Comment 15

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

WFM