Why is everything I download corrupt?

[Archer75]

I had a tough time downloading the City of Heroes beta because I kept getting checksum errors. Same goes with updating my EVE online install.
Or downloading America's Army from fileplanet.

Everything gives me checksum errors or is corrupt. What's going on?

 

[vinnie]

Not dialup? Poor line quality for ADSL? Using download accelerators? Over zealous virus scanner getting in the way? Bad sectors on the HD? Fiddled with registry settings trying to tweak connection?

 

[jpmkm]

First thing I thought of when I read that is download accelerators. Turn it off if you use it and just download it all in one go rather than in segments. Make sure you have plenty of hard drive space. IE saves files to its cache directory, then moves the files over to the intended directory after download, so make sure you have enough space there too.

 

[Archer75]

Originally posted by vinnie
Not dialup? Poor line quality for ADSL? Using download accelerators? Over zealous virus scanner getting in the way? Bad sectors on the HD? Fiddled with registry settings trying to tweak connection?

Using cable internet and have been for years. The problem only just started.
Not using any download accelerators.
The virus scanner I use is on another computer. I scan across the network.
Haven't touched the registry settings.
Doesn't matter if I use IE or Mozilla. Or bypass both and download off of newsgroups.

I'll run scan disk for bad sectors.

 

[vinnie]

How are the filesizes? Are they different from what they're supposed to be? Compare what you download with what other people get for the same files.

What kind of a network are you on, ie topography. Upgraded router/firewall settings, firmware, hardware, whatever lately?

How's your disk fragmentation? Do you defragment at all, or do you have something sitting in the background cheerfully trying to defrag all the time?

What are you doing whilst downloading large files? Are you sedately reading emails, or running bittorrent, edonkey and shareazza whilst playing games at the same time?

How's your heat? I see you're watercooling, is heat still an issue anywhere?

What's your ISP? Do they do anything silly like try caching or use 'special compression'? Not sure how common that is for cable net, but I've seen some dialup providers doing that, it's a further level of possible problems.

I'm all out about there. I'm going to go and giggle at jpmkm's sig for a while

 

[Archer75]

Originally posted by vinnie
How are the filesizes? Are they different from what they're supposed to be? Compare what you download with what other people get for the same files.

What kind of a network are you on, ie topography. Upgraded router/firewall settings, firmware, hardware, whatever lately?

How's your disk fragmentation? Do you defragment at all, or do you have something sitting in the background cheerfully trying to defrag all the time?

What are you doing whilst downloading large files? Are you sedately reading emails, or running bittorrent, edonkey and shareazza whilst playing games at the same time?

How's your heat? I see you're watercooling, is heat still an issue anywhere?

What's your ISP? Do they do anything silly like try caching or use 'special compression'? Not sure how common that is for cable net, but I've seen some dialup providers doing that, it's a further level of possible problems.

I'm all out about there. I'm going to go and giggle at jpmkm's sig for a while

File sizes seem to come out the same. This does'nt affect all files. MP3's and other small files are unaffected.

I'm behind a Linksys firewall. I don't recall the model number, but it's the wired one everyone is using. Haven't upgraded the firmware on it in awhile.

I defrag from time to time. No real set schedule.

While downloading I sometimes browse the web or just walk away. Either way it seems to make no difference.

Heats not a problem anywhere. In addition to watercooling the CPU, chipset and video card the case is loaded with fans. It stays very cool. I had been overclocking. But with the issues I was having with the corrupt downloads I decided to set everything back to stock speeds. This hasen't changed anything.

My ISP is comcast. Don't know that they are doing anything funny like you mentioned.

 

[omega-x]

upgrade your router's firmware..
IIRC, there was some problem with out of order packets on one model causing corruption.. fixed now.

oh..BEFSR41 is the model, if you have that, get the latest firmware.

 

[jpmkm]

I hate the fucking linksys besfr41 v3. Stupid piece of horse shit. It always locks up whenever I am downloading for a long time. I know linksys just released an updated firmware, and that seemed to help a bit, but I still hate it. I wish my old dlink hadn't died. So get the newest firmware and see what happens.