Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer Corrupts Some ZIP File Downloads

Submitted by Kevin Danenberg on Sat, 02/13/2010 - 01:17

Some users have reported problems opening ZIP files of our software updates. Users trying to open ZIP files in Windows XP SP3 report the following error:

The Compressed (zipped) Folder is invalid or corrupted.

Similar symptoms are reported in this Microsoft Knowledge Base article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308090

While the reported affected versions of Internet Explorer are older, we were able to duplicate the problem using Internet Explorer 8.

Confirmation

Our test platform:

  • Windows XP Service Pack 3
  • Internet Explorer 8.0.6001.18702

We confirmed this issue with these steps:

  1. Downloaded ZIP file from our support site using IE 8 to our Desktop. (We used two versions of the same archive, one compressed natively using our test platform, and the other natively in Ubuntu 9.04. Both versions yielded the same result).
  2. Double-clicked the ZIP file to open, resulting in the error message above.

The ZIP file did successfully download and open using another machine running Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Internet Explorer [EDIT: version unrecorded -- check later]. Also had success with Windows XP SP3 and Firefox 3.6 and Ubuntu 9.04 and Firefox 3.0. This validates that the ZIP files themselves are in fact intact.

Workaround

Try using a browser other than Internet Explorer. If you are unable to use another browser on your system, please contact us for an alternate solution.

This may be a server issue. I've been able to work around it by moving the ZIP file to a different server at a different provider. In such cases, IE opens the exact same file just fine. Linux hosting in both cases, but haven't looked into the differences between the host accounts.

Summary

Some users have reported problems opening ZIP files of our software updates.

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