Random Stew It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Firefox To The Rescue

I recently purchased a new laptop for work. Of course, I've spent a good portion of time cursing Vista (we won't go into that now) and loading software onto the box.

One of the pieces of software that I needed to load was Microsoft's .NET 2.0 Software Development Kit -- 354 megabytes of software development kit! But I have a fast Internet connection, so I downloaded the file and ran the setup.

No go. While extracting the bundled files, the setup process bombed out, saying one of the CAB files was corrupt. Hmmm...maybe the file was corrupted in transit. So, I download the file...again.

Once again, I run the setup. Again, the process bombs out with the same error message.

On a lark, I fire up Firefox -- a very good free browser -- and download the file...again. Once again, I run the setup. Lo and behold, the files extract and install successfully!

How ironic is it that Microsoft's SDK for a core component of their operating system is corrupt when downloaded from their site using their browser, but works when downloaded with an alternative browser.