Re: HTTP Download of EXE

From: Scott Norberg (snorberg_at_ecis.com)
Date: 03/18/04 

Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 09:32:00 -0600

We also tried this with an uncompressed exe and saw the same behavior, works
with compression off doesn't when its on.

Even with compression on we were able to download the compressed or
uncompressed exe (SAVE) and run the executeable, so the compression seems to
work OK.

All of our tests were run from the same client running the same IE browser,
so I am not sure how client side behavior comes into play. I suspect it is
more likely that some of the lastest security changes (IE 60 SP1) have
caused this, which I guess could make this client side behavior. I didn't
have an older version of IE around to easily try. Netscape doesn't even
provide an open option, which is probably the correct approach, but they
give you an easy way to navigate to the exe that was just downloaded.

As long as there is a way to make this work, we can just do that for now,
but a real solution would be nice so I hope that this gets reported and
fixed at some point.

Thanks for you help.

Scott

"David Wang [Msft]" <someone@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:uu1SJJKDEHA.2888@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> IIS5.1 has a 10 connection limit and does not support compression.
>
> I played around with this a bit, and I do not think it has anything to do
> with IIS compression (I looked at both IIS5 and IIS6 Compression) nor
> Chunked Encoding. I found different behavior depending on the client.
> - From some IE clients, I was able to download or directly open an EXE
that
> was compressed.
> - From other IE clients, if I first select "Save" (but not actually save),
> Cancel, and THEN select "Open", then Open worked
> - From other IE clients, the "Save, Cancel, then Open" trick from above
does
> not work, but the "Open" button was enabled
> - From other IE clients, the "Open" options wasn't even enabled
> - If there was no compression, everything worked.
>
> Based on the fact that some clients CAN open an EXE that was compressed
> while others cannot, I believe that this is some client-side behavior
> triggered on Compression. In other words, I do not believe that
Compression
> is the problem; I believe how clients choose to handle compression is the
> problem. Unfortunately, the only way to avoid client problems in handling
> compression is to disable compression on the server, which is unfortunate.
>
> --
> //David
> IIS
> This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights.
> //
> "Scott Norberg" <snorberg@ecis.com> wrote in message
> news:e$9Tp1DDEHA.628@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> More information.
>
> We got this to work with a W2K server but we needed to uncheck both the
HTTP
> compression boxes on the master properties/service property page. This
> doesn't seem right to me that we need to turn off static page and
> application compression to get this to work.
>
> I can't even find this page on IIS 5.1.
>
> "David Wang [Msft]" <someone@online.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:ed5Q396CEHA.3804@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> > "Open" is something done by the Client contingent upon hints sent by the
> > server -- so it really has nothing to do with IIS and everything to do
> with
> > how you misconfigured the clients and server.
> >
> > Default IIS and IE settings works with both Open and Save, so I suspect
> you
> > need to check your server or client configuration.
> > 1. If you used the same client against multiple servers with different
> > results, then I suggest you check the MIME Type setting for the EXE
> > extension on each web server
> > 2. If you used different clients, then I suggest you check both the
> server's
> > settings and the client's MIME Type setting for the EXE extension.
> >
> > A easy way to diagnose this is to run a Network Trace program on the
> client
> > and sniff the exact HTTP response sent by each server and observe what
is
> > different between the ones that work and the ones that don't.
> >
> > If the responses are the same, then check client configuration; else,
> check
> > server configuration to figure out the difference.
> >
> > --
> > //David
> > IIS
> > This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
> rights.
> > //
> > "Scott Norberg" <snorberg@ecis.com> wrote in message
> > news:uDxQ441CEHA.684@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
> > I am using an anchor to try to download a setup.exe file, similar to the
> > following
> >
> > <p>Download test</p>
> >
> > I get the typical File download dialog with the standard Open, save,
> cancel
> > and more info selections.
> >
> > If save is selected the file downloads just fine and can be executed
from
> > the download directory, but
> > if Open is select nothing seems to happen.
> >
> > We have tried this from several web servers and the Open works from some
> and
> > not others. So there must be some setting keeping/letting this option
from
> > working.
> >
> > Can anyone shed some light on what to consider when doing this?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>