Question

The downloads of Windows Server Eval software available on this Microsoft page are failing, when initiated from IE8. It gets maybe 15-20% through, and then it just quits. No error message. The download window just disappears.

It works from FF3.5. What gives?

These are 700mb downloads. Does anyone know of any issues in IE?

Answer 1

First thing that comes to mind, is their servers are taking some strain, and dropping the DL. Firefox will resume the DL, whereas the IE download dialog will just fail.

Answer 2

It's very possible that Internet Explorer is dropping the connection, and as kbmonkey mentioned, Firefox has download resume built in.

Personally, I use Free Download Manager for large downloads like that - it supports things like multiple connections and the ability to pause/resume the download. As its name implies, it's free, and it's open-source to boot.