Hidden Internet Explorer 8 Feature – Resume your downloads

File DownloadThat’s right. Finally you can resume downloads in Internet Explorer. It works for me on Windows 7build 7057. This ‘feature’ isn’t documented anywhere, but it does work. If your download breaks before 100% completion, just restart the download from its link and save it to the same location. It’ll start from where the download had broken. Very handy, and I’ve been able to continue a few number of downloads thanks to this. Although, if you try to resume the download after ages (ages as in hours) of breakage, it might not work.

I have no confirmation if this works in the final build of IE 8 on Vista or XP. If you are able to make this work, do let me know in the comments.

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Technology enthusiast, Internet addict, photography fan, movie buff, music aficionado.

11 comments

  1. I doubt its a feature. It used to be the same as early as IE6. Whats actually happening is that it picks up the download from the temporary cache and continues. Won’t work in every case though.

  2. I noticed this the other day as well on something I was downloading, I wasn’t whether or not it was normal though. I stopped using IE a long time ago until W7 beta came out. There certainly should be a better resume implementation in IE.

  3. I just lost a connection on a 600MB .zip file and tried resuming just as you’ve specified, but it didn’t work. :(

    1. What you do is you go to the location, and click the broken file. Click save and it will ask if you want to replace it. Click the yes button. Tada, this is a big help! I was dowloading Fedora (643 MB) .iso file and Almost at the end I put my computer on stand by, and it said “timed out.” Thanks for this tip Imran!:)

  4. It does work but only if the server you are downloading from also supports resume. All ftp servers are not made alike so your mileage will vary.

  5. yeah . I tried it .But all i Get is something like ” File already exists ,do you want to replace it or not “.
    And if I press replace it again starts fro the beginning .Please help me….??

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