Member Avatar for kapil.goyal

i have developed a website.it downloads the file from web server.the code works fine on windows 2000 n windows XP but the code doesn't work on windows 98?

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reported a download that works on Windows 2000 / XP but fails on Windows 98. The most likely causes are client/browser limitations or transport/header issues rather than the server OS itself, as several replies hinted. Common culprits on vintage clients are HTTPS/TLS negotiation failures, strict cache headers that prevent older IE from writing files to disk, chunked or compressed responses that the browser mishandles, or a malformed Content-Disposition filename.

Recommended server-side headers for a reliable attachment response (keep these exact semantics when streaming files):

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/octet-stream
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="example.zip"
Content-Length: 123456
Cache-Control: private

Avoid sending Cache-Control: no-cache/no-store (especially over HTTPS) for downloadable attachments because some old versions of Internet Explorer refuse to save encrypted pages to disk when those headers are present. Also avoid Content-Encoding: gzip on an attachment response unless the client is known to support it, and prefer a stable Content-Length instead of chunked encoding for maximum compatibility.

If the site is served over HTTPS, older Win98 browsers often cannot negotiate modern TLS versions or ciphers, so the connection can fail before any HTTP headers are seen. Checking server logs for TLS handshake failures or testing the same URL from a modern client and from a command-line fetch (curl/wget) will isolate whether the problem is transport-level or HTTP/header-level.

Clarifications from the thread: runtime technology on the server (ASP.NET, PHP, Mono) only affects how headers are emitted; the client does not need the server runtime installed. For legacy clients the safest approach is to emit simple, ASCII filenames, stable Content-Length, private caching, and an attachment Content-Disposition. See the Content-Disposition guidance on MDN and RFC 6266 for filename encoding and compatibility details: Content-Disposition (MDN) and RFC 6266.

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Member Avatar for sedgey

it's probably more to do with the web browser than the version of windows, although without seeing some code or settings for the problem machine it's very difficult to tell.

Member Avatar for jbennet

what language is it?

Member Avatar for hollystyles

ASP.NET requires the .NET framework to run it, Xp ships with the framework and windows 2k will have got from an updare or service pack. You can get the redistributable framework and install it on windows98. ALL .NET software requires the framework to run, just like JAVA needs a JVM or JRE.

Member Avatar for jbennet

or the php interpreter

Member Avatar for sedgey

Call me old fashioned! but given that the guy has already written the application, it is somewhat unlikely that he is going to try and develop it on three different versions of windows and far more likely that he has a user with windows 98 that cannot download a file? I wouldnt have said anything but the thought of the world thinking that you have to have the .net framework installed on your computer just to view an asp.net site is going to keep me awake at night and lose me customers! Bill will be turning over in his newly philanthropic grave :) (shivers) apologies to all if this is simply a case of a badly posed question!

Member Avatar for jbennet

i dont actually think even the site hosting the .net code needs the framework as I run asp.net sites from linux using Abyss just fine

Member Avatar for campkev

i dont actually think even the site hosting the .net code needs the framework as I run asp.net sites from linux using Abyss just fine

yes the site hosting the .net code needs the framework

Member Avatar for hollystyles

Call me old fashioned! but given that the guy has already written the application, it is somewhat unlikely that he is going to try and develop it on three different versions of windows and far more likely that he has a user with windows 98 that cannot download a file? I wouldnt have said anything but the thought of the world thinking that you have to have the .net framework installed on your computer just to view an asp.net site is going to keep me awake at night and lose me customers! Bill will be turning over in his newly philanthropic grave :) (shivers) apologies to all if this is simply a case of a badly posed question!

Yes the original post makes for a lot of guessing. I took the 'download file' bit to mean he/she is downloading a website application or a .NET windows application from the site he/she has to run locally. My post is perhaps misleading I do know you don't need the framework to merely browse an ASP.NET website, you need if you wish to run/develop one on your own box.

Member Avatar for jbennet

yes the site hosting the .net code needs the framework

maybe my linux box can host my asp.net sites as it has mono?

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