Weird
July 25, 2007 12:43 PM   Subscribe

Why wouldn't an attached file download?

I have a Final draft document I'm trying to download from my email. I was able to download it yesterday at work, but, today, on my laptop, it won't download. I tried it on Firefox via gmail. then Safari, then I forwarded it to Yahoo mail, but it won't download on any of these. Why would this be happening? Is there a fix?
posted by generic230 to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)
 
What kind of file? How does it fail (do you get an error message? Does nothing happen?)?
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:55 PM on July 25, 2007


Also: Is it a gmail email? Mac or PC?
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:59 PM on July 25, 2007


Not really enough info to help. I've had attachment downloads fail silently when the file contained a character not allowed in the receiving OS.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:09 PM on July 25, 2007


Response by poster: It was gmail and Yahoo Mail on a Mac. And both Firefox and Safari browsers. There's no error message, it just gets HUNG UP, and never downloads.
posted by generic230 at 1:56 PM on July 25, 2007


Very strange, but TPAA is correct -- file downloads can very occasionally include strings of characters that get interpreted as terminators by the underlying TCP/IP drivers. Sometimes the solution is to ZIP it up first or use a different encoder.
posted by dhartung at 1:59 PM on July 25, 2007


"Character not allowed"? That's absurd.

I seriously doubt that it's confusion of two networking layers. Subby, are you sure you have enough disc space? Though it's unlikely, perhaps you need to dump your browser cache. Or, your browser is launching some app to handle the kind of file it is. Or, even rarer, some antivirus wonkiness.

Opening a terminal and watching the output of "$sudo tcpdump" would be immensely useful
posted by cmiller at 2:32 PM on July 25, 2007


What's the actual name of the file. Is it strictly an alpha numeric?
posted by filmgeek at 3:51 PM on July 25, 2007


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