Member Avatar for quezl

I have a problem when I'm attempting to access one particular web site (which happens to be my own).

It's basically giving my a file download dialog box wanting me to "open the file at it's current location" or "save file to disk" no matter how I try to get to it.

Whether I use a link on another site or type the url directly into the address bar I get the file download box.

I've cleared temp files and cookies, after which I can get to it once. But if I try to go back, I get the download box. I can usually access every page of the site once, after which I will get the download box for any page I've been to.

I also have firefox on this pc (win2k) and I can get to my website fine using it.

I can also access any other web page, no problem, so I don't know what going on.

I did some searching and I came up on a patch from the MS KB q313675.exe but got an error saying "This update requires Internet Explorer 6.0 to be installed" when I tried to install it, which I don't understand because I DO have IE 6.0 sp1 installed.

So I don't know if the patch would fix the problem or not. And right now, I don't know what else to do.

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Dani AI

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As later discovered, the problem was a misconfigured .htaccess that made Internet Explorer treat normal pages as files to download. The browser decides between displaying a page and prompting to save based almost entirely on the response headers the server sends — especially Content-Type and Content-Disposition — so the fix is to find and remove whichever directive in .htaccess (or server config) is forcing a download MIME or disposition.

Quick checklist of things to look for in .htaccess (comment out or remove them, back up first):

# examples of problematic lines to search for
AddType application/octet-stream .html .php
ForceType application/octet-stream
DefaultType application/octet-stream
Header set Content-Disposition "attachment"

How to confirm the headers being sent (safe, simple test):

curl -I http://your-site.example/path

Inspect the response for Content-Type: and Content-Disposition:. If you see application/octet-stream or Content-Disposition: attachment, that explains the download dialog. Also look for conditional rules (BrowserMatch, SetEnvIf, mod_rewrite rules) that might set headers only for certain user agents — that can explain why Firefox behaved differently.

Practical steps to fix and verify: back up .htaccess, comment suspected lines and retest, clear server-side caches if any, then clear your browser cache. If PHP pages are being served instead of executed, verify your PHP handler lines or ask the host to confirm the correct AddHandler/SetHandler for your environment. If unsure, check error/access logs or contact your host — they can often point to a misapplied directive. Finally, once fixed, test with curl -I and in multiple browsers to confirm the Content-Type is text/html (or appropriate) and there is no Content-Disposition: attachment.

Member Avatar for quezl

You can go ahead and solve this one.

It was a problem with my .htaccess file.

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