FIX: Cursor Has Hourglass and Globe Continues Spinning After Saving File in Internet Explorer (243527)


The information in this article applies to:

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer (Programming) 5
This article was previously published under Q243527

SYMPTOMS

When sending a Content-Disposition attachment header from the server, the user is prompted to open or save the file. If the user chooses to save the file, everything seems to proceed normally and Internet Explorer saves the file successfully. But the globe on the toolbar continues to spin and the cursor appears as an hourglass.

CAUSE

This is a cosmetic bug in Internet Explorer. The user interface is not updated after the file has been downloaded.

STATUS

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a bug in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article. This problem was corrected in Internet Explorer 5.01.

MORE INFORMATION

The Content-Disposition header is used to specify how the content is to be displayed. The attachment attribute is used to make the client browser prompt the user to open or save the file.

Steps to Reproduce Behavior

The following Active Server Pages (ASP) file sends some ASCII text to the browser with a Content-Disposition attachment header. You can also mimic this by using CGI scripts to send back the same content.
  1. Save the following as Download.asp and place it on your Internet Information Server (IIS) Web server:
    <%
Response.AddHeader "Content-Type", "text/plain"
Response.AddHeader "Content-Disposition", "attachment; filename=sample.txt"
Response.Write "This is a simple text file"
Response.End
%>
  2. Access the ASP file from Internet Explorer. When prompted with an Open/Save dialog box, select Save.
  3. Notice that the file is saved successfully, but the globe continues to spin and the cursor appears as an hourglass.

REFERENCES

For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

182315 BUG: Content-Disposition: Does not Force File Download Dialog

MIME Type Detection in Internet Explorer

Modification Type:MajorLast Reviewed:10/16/2002
Keywords:kbBug kbDSupport kbie501fix KB243527
©2002 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.