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A PDF download went bad, and now I can't cancel or delete it.

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  • 17 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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I tried to download a 20 Mb PDF file on Firefox, but 75 bytes into the download, the progress bar skipped to the end, and it said "Unknown time remaining". When I tried to cancel the download it only paused it and then it wouldn't cancel or un-pause afterword. Now every time I re-start Firefox, it tries to continue the broken download. Neither clearing my download history, nor deleting the incomplete file did anything. What's going on, and how do I get rid of the broken download.

I tried to download a 20 Mb PDF file on Firefox, but 75 bytes into the download, the progress bar skipped to the end, and it said "Unknown time remaining". When I tried to cancel the download it only paused it and then it wouldn't cancel or un-pause afterword. Now every time I re-start Firefox, it tries to continue the broken download. Neither clearing my download history, nor deleting the incomplete file did anything. What's going on, and how do I get rid of the broken download.

Chosen solution

browser.safebrowsing.appRepURL is the name of the new pref that you need to create via the right-click context menu on the about:config page.

  • open the about:config page via the location/address bar
  • right-click on the page and choose: New > String
  • paste in the name prompt: browser.safebrowsing.appRepURL

You can click OK to close the pop-up for now to make it possible to copy the new value to the clipboard.

You can double-click the line with the pref or choose Modify in the right-click context menu and paste the value that you have stored on the clipboard and click OK to close the pop-up. This should give yo a pref browser.safebrowsing.appRepURL with value https://sb-ssl.google.com/safebrowsing/clientreport/download?key=%GOOGLE_API_KEY%

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That is unfortunately a regression bug in the current beta.

  • bug 1057764 - Download Manager regression in FF32 beta 9 update

Please do not comment in bug reports
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html

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So what am I supposed to do about it?

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You can create/modify this String pref on the about:config page: browser.safebrowsing.appRepURL = https://sb-ssl.google.com/safebrowsing/clientreport/download?key=%GOOGLE_API_KEY%

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

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I don't know how to use the about:config page. I assume I need to create a new string, but I have no idea what I'm doing. Is "browser.safebrowsing.appRepURL" the string name and "https://sb-ssl.google.com/safebrowsing/clientreport/download?key=%GOOGLE_API_KEY%" the value? I never even knew that the about:config page was a thing that even existed until you told me about it. I would greatly appreciate step-by-step instructions, or some other sort of explanation more geared tword someone with only a rudimentary knowledge of computers in general. Sorry to be such a bother.

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Seçilmiş Həll

browser.safebrowsing.appRepURL is the name of the new pref that you need to create via the right-click context menu on the about:config page.

  • open the about:config page via the location/address bar
  • right-click on the page and choose: New > String
  • paste in the name prompt: browser.safebrowsing.appRepURL

You can click OK to close the pop-up for now to make it possible to copy the new value to the clipboard.

You can double-click the line with the pref or choose Modify in the right-click context menu and paste the value that you have stored on the clipboard and click OK to close the pop-up. This should give yo a pref browser.safebrowsing.appRepURL with value https://sb-ssl.google.com/safebrowsing/clientreport/download?key=%GOOGLE_API_KEY%