Dell Studio Vista Not Allowing Downloads

I figured that my colleagues here would be able to resolve this problem for me. (See sig below for details)

I use the latest firefox as my browser (but I have this problem with IE also). When I try to download a spreadsheet online nothing happens. Normally on XP I get a pop-up that asks if I want Excel to open the spreadsheet.

The progress bar moves but nothing downloads. Also when I try to download apps, I usually have to "open link in new tab" in order for it to download; it won't open in the same window. I cannot figure out which Vista settings I need to tweak in order for downloads to pop-up with the "run" or "save" option. I get none of that.

I have checked my download folders and everything. It has to be a setting I don't know about that is different than XP.

I had an XP Pro machine and never had this problem.

Please help folks, this is driving me nuts.

 

I also have this problem. I now use opera to download apps. Looking forward to a solution.

 

I've just tried getting a spreadsheet and it works fine on my Studio 17. Do you have any firewall software, pop-up blockers etc installed other than the windows based ones? The only thing I've changed from the default Vista install (not Dell install, I wiped the laptop as soon as I got it with a clean install) was disable User Accounts Control as I hate it.

 

Maybe I should backup my data and then do a clean install too. I should have done that but I was too eager to play with it. ****!

 

Try disabling all a/v anti-spam stuff. look for any script blocker stuff running too.

This is most likely due to 3rd party programs keeping this from working rather than a Vista setting. Especially if you have the issue in both browsers.

 

Since you're having problems with both Firefox and IE then maybe this is a different problem then I've been having, but the fingerprint reader software adds a extension (DigitalPersona) to Firefox that definitely affects my downloads. There are alot of sites I can't download from unless I disable the DigitalPersona Add-on and then everything works as it should. Updating the drivers have made no difference so I'm guessing there is a compatibility issue between Firefox 3.0.3 and the DigitalPersona Add-On.

Firefox 3.0.3 has another serious bug of not completely (pretty often for me) letting you shut it down without rebooting that Mozilla is supposedly trying to fix.