Topic: .zip corrupt errors

The .zip files that my customers digitally download seem to be corrupt after download for some of them. I am able to use them on a XP machine as well as a Vista machine with no errors. Does anyone have any idea why they would work for me and others, but not for everyone? Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

B.

What're you creating them with?

eBookGold Pro. I also thought that it might be the compression engine of the program, but once again I don't think that could be an issue for the fact that the files work on some machines, but not some others.

can you customers having the issues even download zip files. Not sure if these are companies but, some companies block zip files. Ours do. So if I were to try to download a zip file, it would look like it downloaded but when I tried to extract it, it would be corrupt. So, I mostly have people send me tar files if possible.


Don't know what eBookGold Pro is, but 7zip does a great job

Later,

C:\

No these are individuals who are not behind any corporate firewall. There should not be anything blocking them from downloading .zip files. eBookGold Pro takes html files and makes them .exe eBooks. It allows me to protect the data that I sell, i.e. no printing, print screen, copy and paste, or anything that allows duplication.

Have you checked so that the files are not served as text and as a result getting corrupted by platform newline normalisation? It's happened me a few times with zip-files.

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Have you checked so that the files are not served as text and as a result getting corrupted by platform newline normalisation? It's happened me a few times with zip-files.

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And how would I do this?

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bjwaters said:

eBookGold Pro. I also thought that it might be the compression engine of the program, but once again I don't think that could be an issue for the fact that the files work on some machines, but not some others.

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All I know is not all ZIP archive programs create archives that are compatible with all other ZIP archive programs... and there's probably not really a way to cover all stupid extracters out there, but you can reduce your failures, sometimes.

Ok, so some customers receive 'good' zips, and other's don't?

Then the answer is very likely to be either a browser related issue
(have the broken ones been all been downloaded with a certain set of browsers),
or, more likely actually, some kind of personal firewall/security engine that sit's inbetween
and corrucpts the zips during the download.

Have you compared one of the downloaded zips to the one you're actually sendinging out?

so long,

->Tyberius Prime

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bjwaters said:
And how would I do this?

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Depends. If the zip is served over HTTP, check that the Content-Type is not set to a text/* type. If the zip is mailed, check that the correct MIME headers are provided. If the zip is served over FTP, tell users to use binary transfer.

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I have finally figured out a solution. From what my customers have told me the error arises when trying to open the file using the built in XP zip program. You know, the one that takes .zip files and automatically allows users to open them without using an outside program. To avoid this issue I have just told customers that they must use WinRar to extract the files. Not the most convenient approach, but one that seems to work for them.