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Download randomly stops despite saying it's still downloading.

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

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Each time I try to download something, the download generally stops every few MB (random amount, sometimes 10MB, sometimes 100MB, etc). The problem happens no matter which website the download comes from.

The strange thing is that Firefox does not tell me the download has failed, or even that it has paused. It shows the same download rate as it left off when it was running, along with the estimated time of completion.

For example, if I try to download a 500MB file, the download would start just fine. I would get an estimated download rate of 1.8MB/s and an estimated time of a minute or two. When the download stops, it does not change at all. It still displays my download rate at 1.8MB/s along with an unchanging estimated time.

The download continues if I click the pause and resume button, but it eventually pauses again after it finishes downloading another few MB of data.

Each time I try to download something, the download generally stops every few MB (random amount, sometimes 10MB, sometimes 100MB, etc). The problem happens no matter which website the download comes from. The strange thing is that Firefox does not tell me the download has failed, or even that it has paused. It shows the same download rate as it left off when it was running, along with the estimated time of completion. For example, if I try to download a 500MB file, the download would start just fine. I would get an estimated download rate of 1.8MB/s and an estimated time of a minute or two. When the download stops, it does not change at all. It still displays my download rate at 1.8MB/s along with an unchanging estimated time. The download continues if I click the pause and resume button, but it eventually pauses again after it finishes downloading another few MB of data.

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It is possible that your anti-virus software is corrupting the downloaded files or otherwise interfering with downloading files.
Try to disable the real-time (live) scanning of files in your anti-virus software temporarily to see if that makes downloading work.

See "Disable virus scanning in Firefox preferences - Windows"