Google Chrome does not download files anymore

Question

I have Google Chrome running on HP P6516F with Windows 7 Home Premium. Google Chrome can no longer download files. It starts the download but never finishes.

Any one else with the problem?

Answer 1

This looks to be a known issue that was first noticed with version 8.0522.224. It appears to be the result of Chrome not having write privileges in your download directory:

• I can't get downloads to work
• Chrome does not download files anymore

Your best bet may be a reinstallation. But before you do that, make sure Chrome is running the latest version (this problem may have been resolved with an update). To force a Chrome update: click on the settings button and "About Google Chrome." Chrome will download any updates that are available, after which you should restart the browser. If having the latest version does not resolve the issue you may need to reinstall.

Answer 2

In my experience, this happens specifically when the environment variable(s) pointing to the temporary directory gets messed up.

Sometimes, what happens is that when you make certain changes, including installing some applications, the environment variables stop getting expanded (this is specifically true of variables that contain other variables). As such, the temp or tmp directories could end up not technically pointing to a valid directory (eg the ‘userprofile’ in %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Temp not getting expanded to the user’s actual profile on disk).

Usually, rebooting should fix the issue because when Explorer is run, it re-reads the environment variables and they get expanded again.

You can test to see if this what is causing it in your case.

1. Open a command-prompt
2. View the temporary directory environment variables with a few commands:
   1. > set temp
   2. > set tmp
   3. > dir "%temp%"
   4. > dir "%tmp%"
   5. See if the variables are defined, and if the folders exist
3. If not, set the variables to a folder you have write access to, eg.
   1. > set temp=C:\Users\Bob\Desktop\blah
   2. > set tmp=C:\Users\Bob\Desktop\blah
4. Run Chrome from the same command line
5. See if you can download a file

Answer 3

Use Process Monitor, and watch for ACCESS_DENIED error messages.