bharry's WebLog

PingBack from http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2007/11/24/update-on-akamai-download-problems/

What's the reason to have yet another DLM (Akamai) in first place?

Hi Brian,

I guess I was lucky in that my download finished within the first session. Nevertheless, I certainly wasn't impressed by the experience.

Here's a little background on (my) customer perception of this issue:

*previously*  Damn, that Visual Studio 2005 sure is popular, it is taking ages to download.

*now* WTF is Microsoft thinking, those incompetent $&%^#*. How could they ship a product like this?

See the difference? Slow downloads are annoying to be sure, but shipping crap (doesn't matter that it is third party crap) is inexcusable. (To be perfectly clear, by shipping crap I mean the DLM, not Visual Studio 2008.)

Regards,

Jeroen

While we're on the subject, why isn't Team Foundation Server available on MSDN?  As far as I can tell, it's only available using the Akamia junkware.

Why is MSDN's download process so fubared?  Don't you people care about how IT professionals perceive you?

I downloaded both VS2008 and Exchange Server, and each of them got "Interrupted" in the MS download manager after the whole file was complete, during the "Validation" step.  Guess what: even if you restart the download, it pulls the whole 4 gigs down again, despite the temp file already sitting there with all the bits.

I could write a better download manager in a week or two, and it wouldn't need the Java runtime like Akamai's.  Downloading a file over HTTP is not actually difficult, even with some transient network errors.  Why can't a big company like Microsoft get something this trivial right?  You've had years to fix it.

We have finally basically given up on trying to download VS2008 Pro via our VALID MSDN subscripion because of the totally CRAP download manager.

We have had 4 Download sessions going to beyond 2 to 3 GIGs and then crashing / failing to resume. This has been going on since Friday last week... Firstly it would report a 'Critical error'. Bang end of story... Retry... Later no more critical error, but it would not allow you  to resume...

We are paying for bandwidth by the Gig in our country and this has been a very costly exercise.

Why in the hell Microsoft did not allow TRIED and TESTED commercial third party download managers to be used is beyond me.

Why all the 'hype' about the release of the RTM and then you cannot download it ??????

"Again I'm sorry and we are working hard to fix it as fast as we can."

Something Microsoft could do *immediately* would be to place all the Akamai-only downloads into MSDN.  Right now, Team Foundation Server is only available through the broken Akamai software.  Copy it to the MSDN subscriber downloads so that people can get it that way.

I have to agree with Gecko and others: considering Microsoft's resources, both download managers (MSDN and Akamai) are an embarrassment.  There are free tools which are far superior.

Guys, a download manager is *not* a complex piece of software.  It is embarrassing that Microsoft has been using the same buggy tool on MSDN for many years now -- and this Akamai "alternative" isn't winning any friends.

So you've moved the downloads back to the MSDN system, which means that I now can't download *anything* from there. I get a message from the Transfer agent thing that says "The response from the website is missing required information". This occurs for multiple client machines for multiple different files.

Is there no way of separating the infrastructure so that VS 2008 is slow, as expected, but at least the rest of the downloads *work*?.

What a farce. Completely consistent with the MSDN subscriber experience though.

Tom, can you please contact me directly via 425-707-7787?  I would love to know more details about the download issues you are seeing so that we can (a) resolve them for you asap, and (b) minimize the risk for these issues to show again.

Many thanks,

Anna Lidman

Developer Division; Release Management and Regulatory Compliance

Microsoft needs to figure something out about subscriber downloads. You stopped shipping dvd's in the name of convenience and cost cutting.

I needed to downlaod the german version of vista to debug a problem for a customer of mine. I am getting around 15 k/s, the 2.5 gigabyte download is going to take 66 hours. This is costing me 3 days in productivity and charge time and a really unhappy customer.

1000 downloads an hour sounds impressive until you stop and gauge it against the several million MSDN developers who now have no choice but to use the download service.

I have done a clean install of Windows Ultimate 64-bit with IE 7 64-bit. I have no trouble with downloads except from MSDN. I do not appear to beable to get Akamai's download manager to install. I am unable to download anything from MSDN. I do I go about fixing the problem?

Thanks for your help,

John D. Earls

jdearls@msn.com

(972) 747-9018

Akamai downloader is a piece of !@#$ I cannot believe This program should even be allowed to be used.. i am trying to Download Adobe Premiere but Akamai is going sooo slow.. when it finally finished.. it refused to launch it.. so basically i am unable to download it! WTF?

Please remove tht akamai download plugin, it was good earlier. please remove tht plugin, iam geting server error, so unhappy....

bhas,

We're investigating why you received a server error, but need more information from you in order to reproduce.  Will you please contact me via anna.miller@microsoft.com with further information about the download that's failed for you?  We will then investigate immediately.

Thank you,

Anna Miller

Developer Division; Release Management

I am not able to install activeX control "akamai DLM" on my vista system. i am using IE7. Does anyone have an alternative for downloading stuff using msdn subscription.

ali:

Please go to the MSDN blog web site (found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/msdnsubscriptions/default.aspx), create a user Id and then go to my profile (found here: http://blogs.msdn.com/user/Profile.aspx?UserID=134865).  You see a link to send me a mail.  I'll be happy to assist you in troubleshooting the issue.

Sincerely,

Chris Deluca, Dev Lead, MSDN and TechNet Subscriptions

This is still failing, trying to download the Windows 7 Beta, common Microsoft, stop using some 3rd party activx component that isn't up to the job(getting "The server returned an error.Would you like to retry(Yes/No)").

The software is very poor, no diagnostic message as to why there is a server error, details window is pointless. You can/have done better, please restore our confidence!

When I try to install the ActiveX plug-in on IE8 on Windows XP SP3, it causes an application error message.

"---------------------------

iexplore.exe - Application Error

---------------------------

The instruction at "0x07d00068" referenced memory at "0x07d00068". The memory could not be "written".

Click on OK to terminate the program

Click on CANCEL to debug the program

---------------------------

OK   Cancel  

---------------------------

"

I've gotten the same thing with 0x06b10068 and others as well, any ideas?

When I try to install the ActiveX plug-in on IE8 on Windows XP SP3, it causes an application error message.

"---------------------------

iexplore.exe - Application Error

---------------------------

The instruction at "0x07d00068" referenced memory at "0x07d00068". The memory could not be "written".

same bad think for me.. not windows seven rc possible download.

So far we have not been able to consistently reproduce the issue - if we see more similar issues reported and can repro the problem we will continue to look at the root cause.

Well I'm getting this problem too. Running XP SP3 with IE8 it fails every time I try to download WIndows 7 RC.

No lack of consistancy here!!

iexplore.exe - Application Error

---------------------------

The instruction at "0x07d00068" referenced memory at "0x07d00068". The memory could not be "written".

Click on OK to terminate the program

Click on CANCEL to debug the program

I'm trying to download Windows 7 RC, on XP SP3 and IE 8 - I get the blue bar at the top of the page "This site needs to install the ActiveX blah blah" message, then IE hangs, with a DrWatson and dumprep process locking it all up.  Kill them off and IE closes and the PC's back to normal.

Can Windows 7 be downloaded another way? Or can the Akamai DLM be installed another way?

Same problem for us on XP SP3 IE8.  The yellow stripe comes up to install Akamai plug-in  but before you get the chance to click the bar an error occurs and the page expires.

Funny thing is I got the 64 bit version of Windows 7 the other day on the exact same machine but now we can't get the 32-bit version.

YELLOW BAR: The download wants to install the following add-on: 'Download Manager' from 'Akamai Technologies Inc'....

ERROR DIALOG: The instruction at "0x08d30068" referenced memry at "0x08d30068". The memory could not be "written".

What next? We're not left with much choice here, we can't go Vista, so unless we get remedy real quick... without frustration, we'll move forward with Ubuntu.  It's easily accessible and installs without any issues.

Weird that we had to use Firefox on Unbuntu to get the latest version of Windows 7.  Apparently, there is an insurmountable failure between Akamai download manager and Microsoft IE8.

Jason -

I'm sorry for the delayed response. I am in touch with the team who supports this and they have been unable to reproduce your issue. If you happen to notice this and want to troubleshoot it further with us please feel free to email me using the contact form on my blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/briankel).