Why is Google Chrome not downloading anything?

Question

I click the direct link to the file and it just does nothing. No loading or anything. Some places work, some places don't. I also checked in my Downloads folder, nothing started downloading.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Okay, since the problem is definitely with your profile, what you want to do is to transfer as much of your existing profile to a new one as possible. The easiest way to do it, losing as little as possible is as follows:

1. Leave your old profile alone (ie, don’t move or delete anything from it, even consider zipping it, just in case)
2. Create a new profile if necessary (Chrome automatically creates one when run if one does not exist)
3. Close Chrome
4. Copy one of the files from your old profile to the new one, overwriting the existing one (or rename the existing one)
5. Run Chrome and test to see if the problem exists
   • If it does, delete that file and let Chrome re-create it (or delete the copied one and un-rename the other one)
   • Note the file that caused the problem
6. Go to 1. and repeat for another file until you have processed everything in your profile

Some notes:

• You can try copying a few things at a time, then narrow it down from there, especially since some things are unlikely to be the problem such as extensions, themes, scripts, local storage, etc. In fact, the most likely problem is Web Data. Try that one first.

• Once you have narrowed the problem down to (hopefully) a single file, then you can look into copying as much from the old one to the new one as possible (most of Chrome’s data files are in SQLite3 format, so you can/may/should be able to export the old data and import into the new one).

• Consider doing it the other way around: instead of migrating your old data to a new profile, just make a copy of your old profile and delete one file at a time from it (thus letting Chrome re-create it), then check to see if the problem is fixed.

Answer 2

Try another browser and see if you have the same issue. Its probably an AV/firewall issue. A while back I had a conflict with Spyware Doctor and Chrome. Even if I created an exception to allow full access, it wouldn't work. Had to disable kernel compatibility mode. So check your protection settings for any anti-malware you are running including the not so obvious ones.

Answer 3

Head over to about:flags and check if you have the "New Download UI" enabled. If so, disable it.

Answer 4

I had the same issue some time ago, just for some pages. For me it was my virus scanner (avast... or was it avira, one of them). I just exchanged it.