Re: Problems downloading programs

From: Cris (Cris_at_discussions.microsoft.com)
Date: 02/21/05 

Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 01:49:03 -0800

"Robert Aldwinckle" wrote:

> "Cris" <Cris@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:CC0A4DDD-8291-4732-8788-A3BD5EB2F5A0@microsoft.com...
> > "Robert Aldwinckle" wrote:
> >
> >> "Cris" <Cris@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> >> news:63565EDF-0BBE-4774-B3A1-99C5A08BF172@microsoft.com...
> >> > for example I cannot download firefox at this link
> >> > http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox&os=win〈=it-IT
>
> Wow! Looks as if there is a bug in the web interface that you are using.
> The ampersand and last parameter label (for lang=it-IT) appear to have
> been converted into a weird UNICODE "character".
>
> FWIW the three characters I am seeing in its place (and their
> equivalent helps in CharMap, Characterset Windows: Western) are:
> â U+00E2 Latin Small Letter A With Circumflex
> ΠU+0152 (0x8C) Latin Capital Ligature Oe
> © U+00A9 Copyright Sign
>
> (We may be able to take the bitstring implied by those concatenated
> hex values to figure out the real Unicode character might be
> to get some better clue about why it is happening.)
>
> What do you see when you are looking at that link, one "character"
> or three?

I can see three characters

>Also what shows in the Status bar when you give the link focus?

in the status bar I can see exactly the same link I'm focusing. In other
words, also in the status bar I can see the "〈"

> More importantly, is that the link you were using or was it formatted correctly?
> (It was after all just a repeat of the link that you had originally posted.)

If I use that link (with "〈" or the "box") I'm redirected to the
mozilla.org site.
If I use the correct one the download window appears and depending on the
mirror the download starts or not.

Now I'm replying by means of IE6.0 browser, but all of my posts have been
written with mozilla Firefox. Please can you verify what you can see in the
above reported link?

http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox&os=win&lang=it-IT

>
>
> http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/dgbrowser/en-us/default.mspx?dg=microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6.browser&mid=9448ef1a-debb-4760-8666-a17f57f2a310
>
> Hmm... I just checked the web interface copy of *my* post
> and the link in it looks Ok. At the same time I checked the copy
> of the link in yours and as expected I saw a single character
> (a box character, implying that whatever that bitstring represents
> is not a character in the characterset that I have.)
>
> I think that the only thing that may concern you in all of this
> is to watch for that problem if ever you are needing to use
> links posted by someone using the web interface which contain
> parameters called lang=. Bizarre!

Ok, I will pay attention!

>
> Anyway, back to your problem... <g>
>
>
> >>
> >> What happens when you copy that to an IE Address bar and click Go?
> >
> > When I read your reply I copied the link in order to answer to your question
> > and the window described by you below suddenly appeared. So I could download
> > the file. But I didn't memorised the name of the site. Then I tried again to
> > copy the link on the IE bar and this other window appeared (when I say
> > "doesn't work" it means that this window appears):
> >
> > window appears with "world" icon on the left and the folder on the right and
> > a white page flying from the "world" to the "folder"
> > The window title is "File Download" (I've got the italian version of IE so I
> > have to translate and the words won't be exactly the same as you will see on
> > your IE)
> > "search of file information"
> > "firefox setup 1.0.exe from mozilla.mirrors.tds.net"
> > The status bar all with with no progress
> > Time left: "blank"
> > download in: "blank"
> > Speed of download: "blank"
> >
> > check box named "close window after donload"
> >
> > three button "open" "open folder" "cancel". The first two button are not
> > active
> >
> > after some minutes this window is open, an error window appears:
> > Title "Microsoft Internet Explorer"
> > Impossible to download firefox setup 1.0.exe from mozilla.mirrors.tds.net
> > Impossible to open the internet site. Site not available or not found. Try
> > later
> >
> > Botton "OK"
> >
> > At this time I couldn't download the file
>
>
> Excellent description! Thank you. That is much clearer now
> than "doesn't work" was. In summary, then, it looks as if you
> are seeing the download dialog that you would have seen if you
> had first seen the download prompt (which I described) and
> actually requested something with it?
>

Really, the window I see is not exactly the same that appears after
requesting the download in the window described by you. In the window I can
see there is "search of file information" that there isn't when the download
is running and the file is growing in the computer.

> I'm not sure what that would imply. I would prefer to see a packet
> trace of it happening but I think one explanation might be that the
> server is at fault. It might even be the case that there is a caching
> server somewhere in the path which is responding incorrectly instead.
> (There shouldn't be any caching because the download request
> is essentially a query but who knows?)
>
>
> >
> > Then I tryed again and again and I began to understand that it depens on the
> > mirror choosen.
> >
> >>
> >> How do you get a choice of mirror?
> >
> > I did not make any choice of the mirror. The mirror is apparently choosen
> > casually
> >
> > Here I report a statistic of different mirrors found each trial:
> ....
>
> Again, I think the best way of differentiating the two cases
> and understanding the behaviour of the bad ones would be
> to look at some traces and compare them.
>

If you think that this could help, please tell me the commands I have to
type in order to trace the packets

>
> >> > If I try for instance this other link
> >> > ftp://pegasus.uni-mannheim.de/pegasus/winpmail/w32-421c.exe it works
> >>
> >> Does that mean you don't care about the other cases now?
> >
> > I just only wanted to show you another case where the download works
> > I have had this download problem with .exe files since several months. And I
> > reported here some examples.
>
> Ok. Sounds like you are getting a better understanding of the symptom.
> It's unfortunate that you can't retry an individual mirror site reliably.
> Getting a trace might help find a way to do that too.
> Then you could see if toggling Passive mode FTP was the key
> to making a "bad site" work better.
>
> OTOH just toggling Passive mode and picking a random mirror
> automatically could have these possible effects on your observations:
> 1. no change
> 2. complete reversal (e.g. ones which "worked" then don't)
> 3. partial reversal for the worse
> 4. major improvement
> 5. all downloads completely reliable
>
>
> ....
> >> BTW did you try to do anything with this suggestion:
> >>
> >> >> In case it is an FTP site note that some users can avoid that symptom
> >> >> by playing with FTP settings such as Use Passive FTP...
> >>
> >
> > Where may I change the settings of the FTP client as suggested by you?
>
> In the Options, Advanced tab, Browsing section. The one controlling
> Passive FTP is near the bottom of that section.
>

I checked the configuration and the toggle for "passive ftp" was already on.
I tried to disable the "passive ftp", ..., but no differencies! The bad sites
was still bad and the good was still good. Today there are more mirrors
availabe

With mozilla firefox browser I'm able to download without problems also from
"bad" mirrors

Thank you, bye

>
> Good luck
>
> Robert
> ---
>
>
>