Occasionally I’m emailed by someone who has downloaded one of my products complaining that the ‘zip file is corrupt’. Now this is always due to an incomplete download. I know that because I always check the zip files myself to make sure they’re intact and I have the same problem myself when downloading files that I have purchased!

So what’s happening with these incomplete downloads? I needed to find out because it causes buyers a little bit of annoyance and frustration that they can’t unzip their purchase straight away, as well as the fact that I’d rather spend my support time helping people in other ways!

The problem seems mainly centred around Internet Explorer. So my first suggestion is ‘try downloading a second time’ and, if that doesn’t work, ‘try using another browser’. One or the other always manages to perform the ‘cure’, but I still wanted to get to the root of the problem.

After some experimentation I found that clearing my Temporary Internet Files cache also appears to ‘solve’ the problem. If you don’t know what that is then you ought to know that browsers keep a cache of all the website pages you have recently visited in a temporary space on your hard drive. This is so that, when you revisit those pages, the page and all the items on it, like images, appear quickly on your screen. Rather than waiting for them to download all over again the browser just retrieves the bits it needs from the cache.

Sometimes this can catch you out because, for example, you might be emailed that a new offer has been placed on a website you’ve been to the day before, but when you return to that site you can’t see it! That’s because your browser has probably loaded the cached page rather than the updated one. If that is the case hit the F5 key, or click the Refresh button in your browser, and it will download the new page.

But back to our download problem. When you are downloading large files, and the files in this week’s Monday Madness offer are around 16 – 18Mb because of all the information I’ve packed in, then your browser cache can fill up before the file has completed downloading. If you watch carefully you’ll see this as the download bar starts off moving across slowly and then suddenly rushes to the end. If you look at the file size using Windows Explorer you’ll see that it is much smaller than we say it should be!

The solution, then, is to clear your browser cache before downloading any large files. I’ve listed below the method of doing this for the most popular browsers. Hopefully you won’t have any more problems downloading after you do this!

If you are using Internet Explorer 6.0…

Launch Internet Explorer.
Go to Tools > Internet Options.
The ‘Internet Options’ dialog box is displayed.
Click the ‘Delete Files’ button.
The ‘Delete Files’ dialog box is displayed.
Check the ‘Delete all offline content’ box.
Click the ‘OK’ button to confirm the deletion of your temporary Internet files.
Click the ‘OK’ button again to close the ‘Internet Options’ dialog box.
Attempt to download again.

If you are using Internet Explorer 7.0…

Launch Internet Explorer.
Go to Tools > Internet Options.
The ‘Internet Options’ dialog box is displayed.
On the ‘General’ tab, click the ‘Delete…’ button under the heading ‘Browsing history’.
The ‘Delete Browsing History’ dialog box is displayed.
Click the ‘Delete files…’ button.
Click the ‘Yes’ button to confirm the deletion of your temporary Internet files.
Click the ‘Close’ button to close the ‘Delete Browsing History’ dialog box.
Click the ‘OK’ button to close the ‘Internet Options’ dialog box.
Attempt to download again.

If you are using Firefox 1.x…

Launch Firefox.
Go to Tools > Options.
The ‘Options’ dialog box is displayed.
Click the ‘Privacy’ button.
From the areas listed, locate ‘Cache’. Click the ‘Clear’ button to the right of ‘Cache’ to delete your temporary Internet files.
Click the ‘OK’ button again to close the ‘Options’ dialog box.
Attempt to download again.

If you are using Firefox 2.x…

Launch Firefox.
Go to Tools > Options.
The ‘Options’ dialog box is displayed.
Select the ‘Privacy’ option.
The ‘Privacy’ options are displayed.
Under the ‘Private Data’ heading, click the ‘Clear Now…’ button.
The ‘Clear Private Data’ dialog box is displayed.
Check option ‘Cache’ and ensure that the other checkboxes are not checked.
Click ‘Clear Private Data Now’ to delete your temporary Internet files.
Click ‘OK’ to close the ‘Options’ dialog box.
Attempt to download again.

If you are using Netscape…

Go to Edit > Preferences.
The ‘Preferences’ dialog box is displayed.
Under the ‘Advanced’ category, click on the ‘Cache’ section.
Click the ‘Clear Disk Cache’ button, then click the ‘OK’ button to confirm the deletion of your temporary Internet files.
Close the ‘Preferences’ dialog box.
Attempt to download again.