Missing ".exe" extension on download

[Bob Howard]

Hi,

My daughter gave me her old W2K laptop, and I'm trying to download a program
"xxxxxx.exe" from a web site. The file downloads OK, but without any file
extension ... is just downloads as "xxxxxx" ...

I've poked around and cannot figure out what's wrong.

I've tried the same download on both Win/XP and Win/Vista computers, and
they work fine.

Is there some sort of option I need to set to have the ".exe" preserved??

BTW, I also tried this with my antivirus software disabled, and it made no
difference. I also checked my IE, and it's IE 6 with no plugins.

Thanks for any help!!

bob

 

[Bob Howard]

addendum,

I checked the MIME info for ".exe" (located in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT) and it's
"application/x-msdownload" --- not sure if this is a problem or not...

bob

 

[Sid Elbow]

Hi,

My daughter gave me her old W2K laptop, and I'm trying to download a program
"xxxxxx.exe" from a web site. The file downloads OK, but without any file
extension ... is just downloads as "xxxxxx" ...

I've poked around and cannot figure out what's wrong.

I've tried the same download on both Win/XP and Win/Vista computers, and
they work fine.

Is there some sort of option I need to set to have the ".exe" preserved??

BTW, I also tried this with my antivirus software disabled, and it made no
difference. I also checked my IE, and it's IE 6 with no plugins.

Tools > Folder Options > View

Uncheck "Hide File Extensions for Known File Types"

 

[Bob Howard]

Tools > Folder Options > View

Uncheck "Hide File Extensions for Known File Types"

That was one of the first things I tried ... but the file has no extension,
so this didn't help.

I wasn't that I couldn't see it --- it just plain ain't there!

I suspect this is some sort of system integrity thing so that .exe files
couldn't be downloaded and do damage to the system.

I turned off all my spyware and antivirus software, and the file is still
received without an extension.

bob

 

[Roger Fink]

That was one of the first things I tried ... but the file has no
extension, so this didn't help.

I wasn't that I couldn't see it --- it just plain ain't there!

I suspect this is some sort of system integrity thing so that .exe
files couldn't be downloaded and do damage to the system.

I turned off all my spyware and antivirus software, and the file is
still received without an extension.

bob

Try renaming the file so that it contains <.exe> and see if it opens.

 

[Bob Howard]

Try renaming the file so that it contains <.exe> and see if it opens.

I did rename it and it did open up.

My problem is that this is not workable. I develop and distribute software
and this really complicates matters for any clients who have W2K (assuming
this is not just something wierd with this one computer).

My clients download the software off my web site, and they are generally
computer novices. The strange thing is that I have not run into this in
either Vista, XP or Windows 98 --- only W2K.

So, I want to make this VERY simple for my clients, and make it universal.

bob

 

[Roger Fink]

I did rename it and it did open up.

My problem is that this is not workable. I develop and distribute
software and this really complicates matters for any clients who have
W2K (assuming this is not just something wierd with this one
computer).

My clients download the software off my web site, and they are
generally computer novices. The strange thing is that I have not run
into this in either Vista, XP or Windows 98 --- only W2K.

So, I want to make this VERY simple for my clients, and make it
universal.

bob

I occasionally had that problem in Windows 98, although very rarely, and
that was one of two ways I got around it. The other was to use Mozilla. My
conclusion then was that the problem was with IE6, and definitely not
hardware or website related. You may want to try repairing or reinstalling
it (or cross-posting to the IE6 group, who may have a different take on it).

 

[Bob Howard]

I occasionally had that problem in Windows 98, although very rarely, and
that was one of two ways I got around it. The other was to use Mozilla. My
conclusion then was that the problem was with IE6, and definitely not
hardware or website related. You may want to try repairing or reinstalling
it (or cross-posting to the IE6 group, who may have a different take on
it).

In anticipation that this might have been an IE issue, I posted over there
as well ... but a bit later than when I pinitially posted over here. So
far, no result.

I expect you're right (that this will turn out to be an IE6 issue). I'll
check for IE6 updates (again).

Thanks.

bob

 

[Bob Howard]

Turns out the problem was in the HTML button definition. Using that same
definition, I was able to download a text file. So there's something that
IE6 is doing to stip the extension when it's ".exe" ...

The particular HTML button definition is typically used to initiate
processing on the **server** --- something that I'm not actually doing.
But IE6 probably wants to protect the server from having an executable
running there (these servers are typically at an ISP) so to protest against
that, the extension is being stripped --- even though IE is downloading the
file.

When I corrected the HTML to use a different form of the button definition,
all's working fine!

thanks. bob h.

 

[Roger Fink]

I would have used the "Repair" option for IE in Add/Remove, and then tried
to reestablish what few custom settings I had on the old clunker, because
that's all I know.

Anytime you can fix a Windows problem with a band-aid and a little first aid
cream you are ahead of the game, so glad it worked out.