In the Application options, have you tried using "Always Ask" and saving the file before opening it?

I wonder whether it is a security issue? Do you have real-time antivirus software that checks every download automatically when you save it to the hard drive? (If not, you should!) If so, try the following:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful. This is Firefox's about:config preferences editor.

(2) In the filter box, type or paste scan and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone to switch it from true to false. (One of the features of the scanWhenDone feature is that it marks the file as sourced from the internet, which triggers your IE security zone settings.)

Then go back to another tab and try a new download. Any change?

Hmm that wasn't working last night. This morning I went into control panel>programs>uninstall a program> and then repaired microsoft office student, could that of fixed the problem?

Afterwards, I changed it to "save file" then it opened and saved (though I don't want it to because I open files to look at but don't want to save it), but realised you said to change it to "Always ask" then save the file before opening it, which it doesnt give me that option, it opens it immediately, which isnt a problem, since I dont always want to save the files.

Thanks, it was frustrating me and wasting my time.

Also now I'm still getting the same problem with "mf links" is what they called it, it just asks to choose an application in the "launch application" window. I tried the solution for the previous problem, but it didnt work and still asks for me to choose an application...

Just so you get a better idea, I'm trying to open http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ that kind of "file".

Cheers.

You should be able to open web pages like the SourceForce pages without any external handler at all. I'm not familiar with "mf links". Is there a particular URL that comes up that way?

Or was it the download? That is an .exe file for which Firefox should only offer Save/Cancel.

Oh no, I meant when I open the link, yeah the download.

It offers neither, just to choose an application to open it with...

That is a tar.bz2 archive:

• http://audacity.googlecode.com/files/audacity-minsrc-2.0.1.tar.bz2

Such archives are commonly on the Linux platform, but not on the Windows platform

Any archive manager should be able to open such a file.

• http://www.7-zip.org/

Chose 7-zip, it just quickly flashes (opens then closes) the program and the download window, then nothing happens...

I forgot that I am on Linux.
So I'm getting the Linux version that comes in a tar.bz2 archive.

If yo have a Windows user agent then you get an .ext file (audacity-win-2.0.1.exe)
If you download and save the file to the desktop then you should be able to start the installation of Audacity with a double click on that .exe file

Firefox should never try to "run" an executable file. Try the steps in the following article under the heading "Reset download actions for all file types":

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/cant-download-or-save-files#w_reset-download-actions-for-all-file-types

If that doesn't fix it, do you have any add-ons related to how files are handled, such as a third party downloader?

I don't actually want to download the file, I just wanted to be able to open things normally, and it was an example which wasn't working, thanks anyway "6477 solutions"

Theeere we go, hopefully that works for everything, I'm guessing there's something I downloaded or something which fucked everything up.

Thanks guys.

A file still needs to be downloaded and stored somewhere (likely in the temp folder %temp%) if you want to run the program. There is only an extra step involved in that Firefox wants to save the file explicitly and doesn't allow a direct run. Although there are extensions that allow to bypass this security restriction it is not advised to do this. It is too easy to run a malicious file that way and get infected. If you save the file then your anti-virus software will scan the file before allowing to run.