Running the Chrome browser to download the occasional EXE, is looking better and better right about now. Firefox version 3.6.x, however, requires opening the security clamp in IE just a bit. If you are running Firefox version 3.5.x or 3.7.x you can have your cake and eat it too, with a little work. Fortunately, you can have high security in Internet Explorer and still be able to download EXE files in Firefox. Raise it and it can't.Ī visit to search engine land turned up an item at called Unable to save or download files that addressed this issue directly (see the topic 'Enable downloads blocked by Security Zone Policy').Īs of version 3, Firefox does this on purpose. In a nutshell: lower the security level of the Internet zone in IE, and Firefox can save EXEs. And, the problem was limited to Firefox, portable copies of Chrome v3 and v4 happily saved downloaded files anywhere, even when run with reduced rights via DropMyRights. On both XP machines, the problem happened while logged on as an Administrator with no anti-malware software running. Each time, an EXE file would get created in the local file system, but the file size was zero.įirefox couldn't save EXE files into any folder, not even My Documents. EXE files had their downloads canceled before they even started. After hearing this on the podcast, it was easy to confirm.Īs you can see in the screen shot below of the Firefox Download Manager, the. I hadn't noticed that the only files Firefox couldn't download were EXEs. The second XP SP3 machine had IE 8 installed along with a non-portable copy of Firefox 3.5.9. All instances of Firefox suffered the same problem.

The first was running Internet Explorer 7 and had multiple copies of the portable edition of Firefox 3.6.x as well as a normally installed copy of Firefox 3.5.9. Raising the security level of the Internet Zone (Tools -> Internet Options -> Security tab) in Internet Explorer from the default level ('Medium-high') to 'High' causes a problem for Firefox. With that in mind, here are the gory details. Very often the hardest part to solving a problem is fully understanding it.

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