This posting is for those that have problems downloading RAR and 7Z Files with internet explorer. (When IE doesn't open a download-window but tries to display the files and utterly fails just showing a jumble of random chars)

You can try to use "Save Target As" but this won't work on sites like Elric-M that use redirections and protect themself from direct access to the download links.

The problem is that newer versions of IE on WinXP ignore the file-extensions and look at the mime-type instead. While the HTML specification says that this is the correct way to go (there ARE operating systems without file extensions, after all), common practice in the WWW is to ignore this, and provide just the download link without specification what file-type it is, in these cases IE realizes that it can't display a few common formats like ZIP or EXE but in a fit of megalomania thinks that it can display everything else.

You can disable this feature in the Registry under:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_MIME_SNIFFING

by setting "iexplore.exe" to 00000000

For those that don't know how to do it (and trust me that I don't want to break their PCs) here's a .reg file, you just need to start.

http://home.tiscali.de/jo.ge1/ie_mime_sniff.reg

what are you talking about? IE downloads them fine.

Go to my site or elricM and try to download rar files, if it works you most likely don't have Vista or WinXP-SP2 or Mime-Sniffing is already disabled on your PC.

As I'm using Firefox normally, I just had to try this and I have no problems at all downloading .rar or .7z files from Elric M. Using the latest IE and SP2 - don't have a clue about Mime-sniffing, though, as I've never heard about it.

Be that as it may, there ARE people having problems downloading RAR and 7Z files, and for those this post was intended to help them solve the problem, the lucky ones who don't have the problem can ignore this.

Thanks JOG, I've been using FF lately but thanks anyway for the info. I like knowledge

Downloading Firefox will fix the problem too. Maybe it's just me but I can't imagine using Internet explorer for ANYTHING, save the initial download of Firefox. But thanks for the advice!

Thanks for this JOG. I was having trouble downloading the rar files from your site. I use firefox though. Haven't touched IE in years. But i was getting the garbled rar files with firefox too. The save as worked just fine.

I did update my firefox yesterday morning. Could be something wit 2bb h that latest update.

A little bump as the problem is still existant.