KNHaw's page

I had wanted to edit my earlier Firefox post, but it seems I can't (too old, perhaps?). Instead, I will post a useful Firefox tip that killersquirel11 PM'd me with:

In firefox, if you go to about:preferences#applications, you can set Compressed (zipped) Folder to Save File and it will auto-download without prompting you.

I had noticed this and was a bit irritated by having to repsond to the prompt, so I'm glad to have the update.

lost_limey wrote:

I will say that the inability to handle this traffic has made me a little leery on purchasing anything else (which is a shame, as I'd like to use some of my bundle savings to buy the complete Kingmaker Adventure Path and run that.

While I understand the rough first impression a lot of people are getting of the site, I have hundreds of Paizo PDFs that normally download without any drama at all. Every now and then, when there's a major new release at GenCon or the like, it takes more than 10 seconds to personalize a file. But I regularly use Chrome of the impatient 90 seconds and have never had it time-out trying to download before the Humble Bundle hit.

If Edge is working for you, stick with it. But if you want to go with Firefox, it's a free download... and Mozilla's servers are faster than Paizo's (GRIN).

Tabbymouse wrote:

So two days ago I managed to get a tiny free PDF to download using chrome. Now, if I click to get something personalized, in less then a minute I can click it and it says "your download will start in 5 seconds"...then chrome times out. C&P to IE and...nada. But if I log into IE and click the same file it starts all over from personalization but now seems to take an insane about more time. (On Chrome I went from Personalizing to wanting to download in about a minute...going on five minutes in IE and still waiting on personalization)

Seems people have had a good try on Edge...but my win10 machine is basically a netbook and doesn't have the storage to try and download these.

When Chrome times out, copy the URL out of the address bar, paste it into IE or Firefox, and go. That's worked for a fair number of people.

In Firefox you can also play with the timeout to make it as long as you want (see my post on previous page). In theory, you should should be able to download anything that's been personalized if you do that and are willing to wait. If it still fails, post details here or PM me.

Bought Thursday, still can't download anything, have tried waiting as suggested above - as far as I can tell nothing works. I have noticed that the download page will mark items as having been downloaded when I never actually received the download. I'm a sysadmin, I understand you are overloaded. But that last feature borders on actively malicious. You may want to consider that if you are using whatever triggers that flag to track successful downloads your statistics are not valid.

I will try again later. But unless things improve, at some point I will want my money back.

Are you using Chrome? We've discovered it has a fixed timeout for downloads to begin. I posted instructions on the previous page for increasing the timeout on Firefox or you can (shudder) try IE.

All this assumes you've gotten past personalization and it's just a download issue, though.

I am having trouble downloading PDFs that I need for a convention that I am helping organize. Any advice rather than trying another five times for a single file?

See my post about the Firefox workaround above. If you give it a shot, please message me with any improvements I can add to make my instructions clearer.

TL;DR: There is a simple workaround that can greatly improve your chances of getting your files, but you will will have to download the free Firefox browser if you are using Chrome or IE.

If you're past the personalization problems but facing timeout issues (i.e. you can get to the "Your download should begin..." page but not get your file), I've found a workaround for the Firefox browser. Specifically, in Firefox open the URL "about:config" You will be asked if you want to proceed ("This might void your warranty!"). Don't let the warning scare you, as we won't be messing around with anything dangerous. Click "I'll be careful, I promise!"

You will now reach a configuration page for Firefox . Type "network.http.connection-timeout" into the "Search" box. This is the period of time that your browser will wait for a new webpage or (as is the case here) a download. By default, it will be "90" for 90 seconds. Right click on it and select "modify." I chose a full hour (3600 seconds) but feel free to play with the value.

You will now have that long to download a file that has already been personalized, so if the server's slow you won't get a hangup. Open up a new tab and log in and attempt a normal download of your PDF. When you get to the "Your download should begin..." page, just click on the "If it doesn't, please click here" link (because, let's face it, this isn't going to happen in the promised five seconds). Now go off and do something constructive. Within a few minutes (i.e. longer than the normal 90 second timeout) your download should begin.

By default, Firefox will ask you if you want to open or save the file - I suggest saving it just to keep things simple and open it later. Do this as soon as you can, though, as the download doesn't begin until you make the choice (another good reason not to wander too far away). At any time during the download, click on the downward green arrow in the right upper corner to see the status of ongoing downloads.

Finally, I would suggest you change network.http.connection-timeout back to the default value when done, as leaving it on this setting will make your browser wait a very long time before letting you know if you try to connect to some other website with connectivity problems.

If you don't have Firefox, you can download it for free at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/.

Note that in my researches, it appears that Chrome does *not* support changing a connection timeout, even though users have been requesting it for over 6 years. This is a downer to me, as I usually use Chrome.

There appears to be a way to do this in Internet Explorer (see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/813827) but since it involves modifying Windows registry values, I do not recommend it unless you are an experienced user and have some sort of love affair with Internet Explorer.

Good luck!

UPDATE: I just started a download of Ultimate Combat and it took 2 minutes before the Firefox save menu came up. If I'd been using the default 90 second value or Chrome, it would have been a failure. Instead, it is merrily downloading (5 minutes remaining!) as I type this sentence.

UPDATE2; I have downloaded 5 files in the past hour using this technique. Previously, I had only gotten 2 files over the course of 4 days.

I'm having the exact same problem as everyone else here. I will give it a few minutes, but I'm not that happy with the lack foresight on Paizo's part right now. Yes, I get it: Humble Bundle has buried you guys. But it's not like this was going to be a surprise, especially with personalization hosted on Paizo's own servers versus Humble Bundle's (the usual delivery method).

EDIT: Multiple tries over several minutes (my feeble attempt not to be part of the problem) and nothing. Longest wait was 30 minutes, still not a single thing past "Personalizing... Click link again in 10 seconds to download" The 30 minute attempt logged me out and kicked me to the front page without even a "Heavy Traffic" banner. Will try again tonight, but I am not happy at *all*.