I'm tired of downloading 0 kb files

[Dragon Zachski]

No, seriously, I am.

I download a 1.3 GB file (the Shin Megami Tensen MMO installer), wait several hours for it to finish, see that it's finished downloading successfully, so I go to it, and it's a freaking 0 kb file.

I mean, what the hell is going on here!? I'm using Firefox 3.5, the only thing I can think of is that it's the virus scanner (AVG Anti-Virus Free) that's screwing around with it.

I've googled it, and tried the solutions. Nothing worked, and their symptom is a little different; they don't even download the file, just instantly "download", say, a 1.3 GB file and then get a 0 kb one. Nothing on Firefox actually DOWNLOADING the file and then changing it into a 0 kb one.

I don't know what's going on. I've even tried to download the file from different sources, but it still pops up as a 0 kb file once it finishes.

Oh, and I'm running Vista.

Can anyone help out?

[Mantorok]

Is there a part file (e.g. setup.exe.part as well as setup.exe)?

[lumberjackninja]

How much free space do you have? How many files in the destination directory?

There is a similar symptom under linux, where firefox will try to download the file, but it can't create the file because there's either not enough space on disk (this can be helped by running as superuser, because root has like 5% reserved on each partition), or there's too many directories in the tree (this is a really hard limit to hit, and generally says more about the state of your file allocation table than the amount of data on your drive).

Make sure you have write and create privileges in the directory you are downloading to.

[RavynousHunter]

Yeah, every file allocation table has a very strict maximum size, and once you reach it, you can't create any new files until you get rid of some crap. That's why its always a good idea to, when you partition your drive, separate it into multiple partitions. With the larger drives, I usually cut 'em into about four partitions, and up to six if its big enough.

Also, a little trick when using multiple partitions on one drive: the first drive (C) is always the closest to the center of the HDD platter(s), and is therefore easier and faster to access. So, its usually a good idea to put things like Windows on C in a multi-partition setup. Unless, of course, you're using a solid-state drive, in which case, it doesn't matter because all the access times are the same.

[Dragon Zachski]

This isn't a multi-partition set up. This is just two partition, the default that came with the computer. And the second partition is the recovery partition, so I can't do anything with that.

There are multiple user accounts, though.

As for how much space is available... 224 GB

As for how many files are in the folder... one file and 11 folders (all those folders lead to various things). I'm actually trying to save it to my Account folder rather than, say, C:

Oh, and there's a .part file while it's downloading. Once it finishes downloading the entire thing, though, the .part file disappears.

This computer has a lot of breathing room, hard drive wise. There's only one other file in the folder, and it's a paltry 13.8 MB.

EDIT: I should tell you that I initially tried to download it into the User/Downloads folder. There's NOTHING in the folder. It still came out 0 kb.

EDIT2: So it's only Firefox. I just tried to download something in IE and it downloaded just fine. WTF.

EDIT3: Okay... so I tell Windows to unzip the file... it sees that there are files in there, it creates the folder... and then it doesn't move the files.

So the problem is with the computer, not the internet browser.
Nevermind. WinRAR fixes things. Unfortunately, I don't know why Firefox won't download anything.

[RavynousHunter]

Your version may be borked. Try re-installing a fresh version and see if that don't fix things.

[lumberjackninja]

Aug 10, 2009 6:06:27 GMT -5 RavynousHunter said:

Also, a little trick when using multiple partitions on one drive: the first drive (C) is always the closest to the center of the HDD platter(s), and is therefore easier and faster to access. So, its usually a good idea to put things like Windows on C in a multi-partition setup. Unless, of course, you're using a solid-state drive, in which case, it doesn't matter because all the access times are the same.

I think you've got it backwards. Sector 0 is located on the outermost edge of the platter, because for any given rotation, more data moves by the head on the outside part of the disk than on the inside. Since the head moves in an arc which deviates very little from the chord that describes it, there is no significant penalty for moving the head across the drive.

[RavynousHunter]

Thaaaaaaaaaaat's right. I tend to get things backwards every once in a while. Hell, I do things backwards quite often (apparently) and never even notice it.