System Admin

15-Dec-11 11:48

Not sure if this is the correct forum but didn't know where else to put it.

I have a few (actually a lot) of clients still on XP SP3 using various versions of Internet Explorer. They download files from a particular Web site where the files have non-standard file extensions like .2345 or .522AB. On a couple of systems the Save Type As defaults to Text and then appends a .TXT extension to the file. I need the files to have the original extensions.

I've tried adding the extensions to Registered File Types and I've looked everywhere for a default download file type, but can't find anything. Also searched the Web (honest) but am stumped and it's driving me crazy.

It’s not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it’s because we do not dare that things are difficult. ~Seneca

Peter_in_278015-Dec-11 12:51

Peter_in_2780

15-Dec-11 12:51

[Probably lives in web dev forum, but I'll answer here.]
If you have control/influence over the server, check and adjust the Content-type and Content-Disposition HTML meta headers. If the browser they use has a single brain cell left, you should be able to tell it (a) that the file is plain text and (b) [edit] where (i.e. the filename) [/edit] to save it by default.

hth
Peter

[edit] clarified use of disposition as marked. [/edit]

Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994.

modified 15-Dec-11 19:06pm.

AnnieMacD16-Dec-11 3:41

16-Dec-11 3:41

Thanks for the reponse but this isn't a programming question. What I can't figure out is how IE should be configured so that there is no default file type when downloading files for extensions it doesn't recognize.

It is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties. ~ Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

User 171649216-Dec-11 4:12

User 1716492

16-Dec-11 4:12

Read this, it might help you ...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms775147%28v=vs.85%29.aspx[^]

modified 1-Aug-19 21:02pm.

Randor 16-Dec-11 9:23

Randor

16-Dec-11 9:23

AnnieMacD,

It sounds to me as if the Systems Administrator may have enabled MIME Sniffing Safety which essentially causes Internet Explorer to inspect the first N-Bytes of the file and attempt to automatically determine the MIME type and disregard the file extension. This is generally desirable on a high-security network... where EvilHackerX wants you to download EvilPayload.txt but it is actually an executable... the MIME Sniffing Safety feature would read the first few bytes and see that it is actually an executable and correctly rename it to EvilPayload.txt.exe

Check those workstations by going into the group policy editor (gpedit.exe) and navigate to:

\\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer\Security Features\MIME Sniffing Safety Feature

Check to see if disabling this feature fixes the issue you are describing.

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

AnnieMacD16-Dec-11 11:38

16-Dec-11 11:38

Thanks, I think this is what I was looking for. I'll try it out at the beginning of the week - hopefully that will do it.

It is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties. ~ Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

Randor 17-Dec-11 3:32

Randor

17-Dec-11 3:32

AnnieMacD wrote:
Thanks, I think this is what I was looking for.

Well let me know how it turns out. Keep in mind that even if the domain/workgroup policy is 'Not Configured' that the user may have enabled this feature in the browser itself. You can view this by opening Internet Explorer 'Internet Options' and navigating to the 'Security' tab and pressing the 'Custom Level' button... scroll through the settings until you find 'Enable MIME Sniffing'. It it possible that the users have enabled it here.

You could force the policy of 'Disabled' upon your subordinates through the group policy editor.

Btw... I am serious about letting me know if this was the cause of the problem. I am somewhat making an educated guess at what causes the issue you describe.

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

AnnieMacD17-Dec-11 5:36

17-Dec-11 5:36

David, I really appreciate your help/advice. I can't check my clients' machine until Monday but I still have one computer here with XP SP3 and IE7. It would appear that the option in IE7 is "Open files based on content, not file extension". I have mine set to 'enabled' and I don't have the problem. But I will set theirs to 'disable'.

BTW I assume you are working on Windows 7. Under XP (at least on my local machine), the Group Policy Editor does not have an Internet Explorer option under \\Administrative Templates\Windows Components.

Even if this doesn't work you have helped me a lot in that I wasn't aware of the MIME Sniffing Safety feature. Funny thing is my app does a similar thing with these crazy-named files that the users download - it opens them up and then acts on them depending on the first few characters. Trouble is, I have no interest in .TXT files!

I will most definitely let you know how it gets resolved.

It is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties. ~ Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

Randor 17-Dec-11 9:27

Randor

17-Dec-11 9:27

AnnieMacD wrote:
It would appear that the option in IE7 is "Open files based on content, not file extension".

I just checked and you are correct... on Windows XP this IE8 security feature is called 'Open Files based on content, not file extension'.

AnnieMacD wrote:
BTW I assume you are working on Windows 7.

Yep, your psychic abilities are working very well. Smile | :)

AnnieMacD wrote:
Under XP (at least on my local machine), the Group Policy Editor does not have an Internet Explorer option under \\Administrative Templates\Windows Components.

Interesting... all 13 XP-Sp3 workstations here in my lab have \\Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer in the group policy editor. I guess the IE8 and IE9 installers adds this. I would suggest that you install:

Administrative Templates for Internet Explorer 7 for Windows[^]

I highly recommend that you upgrade all workstations under your control to IE8 or IE9.

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

AnnieMacD17-Dec-11 10:53

17-Dec-11 10:53

Thanks again, David, for your help. The Administrative Templates are for XP SP2 but I downloaded them anyway but made no difference - still not there.

I'm afraid I'm in the unfortunate situation of not having much influence on what my clients have on their machines. It took me a long time to convince the non-Win7 ones to upgrade to SP3 of XP - I'm developing in .NET 4 and the Client will not install on SP2. I only keep XP and IE7 for support purposes but can't have every combination!

Monday I'll change the "Open files based on content, not file extension" option and that may fix it, and I'll let you know if it works.

It is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties. ~ Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

AnnieMacD19-Dec-11 10:01

19-Dec-11 10:01

Dave, just a quick update.

Randor wrote:
'Open Files based on content, not file extension'.

This didn't appear to do anything, so, as a workaround, I added the extensions I knew about to the Registered File Types list. When they were downloading files, the default file type still came up as 'Text File' but it did not add the .TXT extension. This is not a totally satisfactory solution for a number of reasons not least of which I don't yet know all the extensions, so I'm getting calls to a) add the extension to the list and, b) remove the .TXT. However, I can do it programatically in my next update but that too is essentially burying my head in the sand!

What I don't understand is what determines whether there will be a problem or not. Only a handful of XP clients have the issue and I can't yet see anything that makes them different from the majority.

BTW I have no influence whatsoever as to what browser they are using Thumbs Down | :thumbsdown:

It is an absolute certainty that there are no certainties. ~ Christopher Hitchens 1949-2011

What's Going On Here? Slow Win7 System Gives No Clues

Randor 19-Dec-11 11:20

Randor

19-Dec-11 11:20

Hey Annie,

Well I completely read the link Richard Abbott gave: MIME Type Detection in Internet Explorer[^] along with another one here: Handling MIME Types in Internet Explorer[^] and it is quite obvious that they are using a probabilistic algorithm to 'guess' the MIME type.

Could you double check that FEATURE_MIME_HANDLING is actually disabled in the registry?

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE(or Current User)\Software \Microsoft \Internet Explorer\Main \FeatureControl\FEATURE_MIME_SNIFFING\

Some documentation on the MIME handling subject:
Event 1021 - MIME Handling Restrictions[^]
Internet Explorer MIME Handling Enforcement[^]

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

Roger Wright12-Dec-11 19:17

Re: What's Going On Here? Slow Win7 System Gives No Clues

12-Dec-11 19:17

When I built this beast in May, it was a screaming machine - Intel i7 CPU, 12 GB RAM, 1.5 TB SATA HDD. Within the past month, though, it's become sluggish and unresponsive. Both AdAware and MSE report a clean system - no nasty beasties lurking and stealing CPU cycles. Task Manager displays no active apps, less than 2% CPU activity for any process, 0% network capacity used. Performance monitoring reports that one CPU core is about 60% occupied, while the other 3 are idle, and no more than 20% of RAM is in use. Defrag reports 0% fragmentation on the HDD, not surprising since I have it set to defrag once a week. Ordinarily, with information like this, I'd declare the machine healthy, but the fact remains that it's doggy poo. Simply loading Solitaire, which used to start up in under one second, now takes 12 to 15 seconds to load. Navigating the web used to be an instantaneous process, but it now takes half a minute or so just to see a new URL. Once there, navigating the site is still extremely fast, but switching to a new domain again takes a long time. I purchased Registry Booster from Uniblue and ran that; it claimed to find 309 registry errors and fixed them. After rebooting the system it actually did run like the wind again for about two days, then it was back to crawling.

I've used up all the tools in my toolbox, and I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions?

Will Rogers never met me.

User 171649212-Dec-11 21:59

User 1716492

12-Dec-11 21:59

Roger, just some ideas for you ... have you checked to see what Windows Services you are running but never or rarely use. Black Viper has created a list which you might want to view ... http://www.blackviper.com/2010/12/17/black-vipers-windows-7-service-pack-1-service-configurations/[^].

Although you can use SysInternals AutoRuns to establish what runs at boot, have you looked at using their Process Monitor and Process Explorer to see what is going on when the computer is being used. And by extension, have a try out of this http://processhacker.sourceforge.net/[^]

Firewall - what are you using, could it be incorrectly configured.

Not free, but 30 day evaluation, try http://www.passmark.com/products/bit.htm[^] for stress testing your PC

modified 1-Aug-19 21:02pm.

Re: What's Going On Here? Slow Win7 System Gives No Clues

Roger Wright13-Dec-11 19:12

Re: What's Going On Here? Slow Win7 System Gives No Clues

13-Dec-11 19:12

Thank you, Richard - I'll try these suggestions out, and if they help, I'll publish them, I can't be the only one experiencing this... Big Grin | :-D

Will Rogers never met me.

Randor 15-Dec-11 10:29

Randor

15-Dec-11 10:29

Roger Wright wrote:
I've used up all the tools in my toolbox, and I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions?

Roger, are you running an anti-virus or other security tools? Many of them hook hundreds of kernelmode/usermode functions to 'double check' absolutely everything... opening files... memory access... and can cause a fast computer to become slow or mediocre.

You said that you have a 1.5TB SATA drive. Congratulations, however... it is always better to put the swap file on a drive other than the drive containing the operating system. With 12 GB RAM your swap file is going to be enormous... and despite what you might think... even with 12GB RAM the swap file will still be utilized.

I cannot think of much else... other than using a tool such as Trend Micro HijackThis[^] to check if you have too many browser helper objects. Another useful tool is Microsoft Autoruns[^] by the infamous Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell. Autoruns will tell you absolutely everything running on your computer.

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

Re: What's Going On Here? Slow Win7 System Gives No Clues

Roger Wright15-Dec-11 17:24

Re: What's Going On Here? Slow Win7 System Gives No Clues

15-Dec-11 17:24

Thanks, David!

Actually, the swap file was one of the first things I thought of, along with the possibility of having too large data clocks. I've been out of the computer repair business for several years,but two things used to be true - the default block size grows with the hard drive capacity, and once data has been stored, it's too late to split the drive into logical drives. If I'd partitioned the thing at first, I would have had smaller blocks, resulting in faster reads, and I'd be able to select a different drive for the swap file. I don't know if it's still true that I can't create a new logical drive without risking data loss or not, but if that's been improved and can be done safely, I'd certainly consider it!

The only tools I use are AdAware and MSE, and neither of them seems to be active; at least they don't show up as using any CPU cycles in the performance monitor. Brpowser Helper Objects are a possibility, though. I'll check that out.! Big Grin | :-D

Will Rogers never met me.

Randor 17-Dec-11 3:53

Randor

17-Dec-11 3:53

Hi Roger,

I apologize for not responding to your post yesterday. Your comments left me scratching my head for several minutes so I decided to leave it be.

Some comments:

Roger Wright wrote:
I've been out of the computer repair business for several years,but two things used to be true - the default block size grows with the hard drive capacity

I have never heard of a filesystem with 'block sizes' that automatically grow. Typically the cluster size is determined when you create the filesystem. The only thing I can think of that could potentially grow... would be the MFT on an NTFS partition.

Roger Wright wrote:
I would have had smaller blocks, resulting in faster reads

Smaller cluster sizes essentially mean the drive head will potentially need to thrash around more... and gather more data. For example... if you save a 1MB file... on a filesystem with 1KB clusters... the drive head will need to gather 1024 blocks. If the filesystem was created with 4KB the drive head would only need to gather 256 blocks.

Larger cluster sizes usually result in faster data access... but will waste drive space. For example... If you save a 1KB file on a filesystem with 4KB cluster size.... there is 3KB wasted in the cluster.

With your 1.5TB drive I believe the default cluster size would be 4KB on NTFS.

Best Wishes,
-David Delaune

Re: What's Going On Here? Slow Win7 System Gives No Clues

Roger Wright17-Dec-11 4:46