My friend is downloading a big file (131MB) and it stops halfway saying its complete. I know this because he gets an error that he can't open it.

c:\documents and settings\compaq_owner\desktop\mydocuments\halotrialsetup.exe is not a valid Win32 application.

Download the file using a download manager.

Is he on wireless. If you lose connection transiently, it may stop.

Use download manager, such as MassDownloader or FlashGet, as nitroshift suggested.

Do those really speed up downloads?

Since when does "manager" also mean "accelerator"?

Some managers can speed up downloads on slow networks by downloading several parts of a file simultaneously.

For example, a 100 mb file can be broken into 10 pieces and the manager can download 10 pieces at the same time. The download site has to allow multiple connections, however.

Managers are handy, because they can resume broken downloads; unlike IE which may or may not resume broken downloads.

Two good free download managers are.

Free Download Manager http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm

Orbit Downloader http://www.orbitdownloader.com/index.htm

Another good download manager is GetRight but it costs money

GetRight http://www.getright.com/get.html

On the other hand, you can try to clear all cookies & temporary internet file(including offline content) in IE & try to download it again.

Acutally, i also suggest you to use download manager since the file size is too big. There are more options in downloading file.

you can try to clear all cookies & temporary internet file(including offline content) in IE & try to download it again.

I had a problem downloading a 700Meg iso and it took me 4 tries before realizing there was only 400Meg free on my system partition. There was no error message ! . Deleting temp files got me enough room indeed.