Downloaded PDF files corrupt

Is the file definitely corrupt?

if you copy it onto another users machine, does it open?

How about if one of the users logs into their account on his machine? Then let them download and open the file using their account.

File is definitely corrupt, I have copied the file and tried it on another known working system. I have a feeling it could be the switch or the network printer. The network printer is at times used to print about 50 - 80(or more) pages. Just not sure if I am sure of this.

I have done it with another user as well and it will not open.

one of the machines that is working, is this on the same switch?

If not, swap the working machine for the one not working and see if the results reverse.

No the only nodes connected to the switch is the network printer and the vista machine. Thats why I suspect its the switch but it doesnt happen all the time.

can you connect a working machine to the switch and test?

It is starting to sound like the switch being the problem

Hi,
   Is it all PDFs or just when he tries to open them in IE or through whatever browser he may be using? Some of my endusers had this problem and I found that if you have Adobe Acrobat coupled with Adobe Reader, the user will experience problems opening PDFs through their browsers.
   Please go to Start/ Control Panel/ Programs and Features/ and uninstall Adobe Reader if the machine already has Adobe Acrobat on it.
     If it is not a browser related issue try uninstalling Adobe Reader, but make sure you type in "regedit" in the Run application and navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/ and make sure to delete the Adobe string that may be left behind. After the uninstall try reinstalling Adobe Reader and see if his PDFs come up.

i dont recall seeing acrobat installed on his system.  i will check on that to see if its installed and try that solution.  i was already planning on hooking up another system to that switch to test but that dept is too busy for interruptions.  thank you very much for all that has replied i will post my results once i have tried the solutions.  im shooting for 4pm pacific time to start troubleshooting again.

i dont recall seeing acrobat installed on his system.  i will check on that to see if its installed and try that solution.  i was already planning on hooking up another system to that switch to test but that dept is too busy for interruptions.  thank you very much for all that has replied i will post my results once i have tried the solutions.  im shooting for 4pm pacific time to start troubleshooting again.

Macguy,

are your users viewing the pdfs through a browser only or are they downloading ang viewing through reader? my user is downloading and viewing through reader,  he gets an error message stating saying its corrupt and unrepairable.

Macguy,

are your users viewing the pdfs through a browser only or are they downloading ang viewing through reader? my user is downloading and viewing through reader,  he gets an error message stating saying its corrupt and unrepairable.

Hi Pfranco,
     They are doing both. =0)  PFranco can you please have the user  right click the link they are trying to download the document from and choose "Save as". Also download a PDF from a source that you know has uncorrupted PDFs to help troubleshoot this problem.  If you after you have downloaded the PDFs from both locations and are still having the problem try the uninstall process I posted above. Thanks.
 

I had a similar issue.   Due to potential security issues from PDF files with malicious javascript encoding,  some government networks have put filters in place to block PDF's with javascript encoding in them.

Try to download a generic 'safe' pdf like the infamous Chicken PDF:
http://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf

If you can view/download that PDF then you know the problem is not with your Adobe Reader/Acrobat applicaton but is most likely network related.  Check with your network resources to see if this is something that they are filtering.

Were the PDF's initially created on a MAC?  there are some issues going from mac to pc PDF's even using adobe software

The issue is intermitten and he is the only one that has this problem. There are times when he is able to download the report just fine. The PDF's are not created from a Mac, the website in which the company uses generates a report that is only able to be downloaded one time only. So since the file comes up to be corrupt he is unable to redownload the file. So far today it has not happened yet, I still have to try some of the solutions above. Thanks again for the replies.

Try using a different browser to download the PDF. If using ie try firefox and vice-versa.  Could be a problem with the browser.

So far I was only able to check if the user had acrobat installed. He doesnt have the program installed only reader. He's tried both browsers already, he's currently using firefox which has minimal issues with the web app they use for reports. He was using IE before but it would at times have problems pulling up different sections of the app. No issues today so far, but he has noticed a connection lag with outlook ever since I installed that gigabit switch. I will be bringing in another system to connect and test, any suggestions on tests I should run? My networking knowledge is not advance so please feel free to suggest any tests.

I would suggest creating another user on the same switch to see if it has the same problem.  If not, than you have isolated the problem to his user profile. In that case, copy his profile to the new profile and delete the old profile.

You said other users in the department are not experiencing the problem.  I am assuming that they are not using the same switch.

Thats correct they are not on the same switch. I will post my results once the user has more time for me to diagnose. Thanks!

Hi Pfranco,
   We are getting close now. Okay so what version of IE are you running. If your user only has Adobe Reader then I would suggest updating IE to version 8, if it is not already 8, and then do a complete uninstall of the reader on the administrator side of the workstation. After that do a reinstall of Adobe Reader and then have him logon to his side.
 

So today the problem occured again, he was downloading a report that is in the same pdf file format and it came out to be corrupted. As i watched the web browser from downloading, the file stops downloading at 2.3 mb out of 4 mb. From what it looks like the connection times out and just says that the file is corrupt due to the file not being downloaded completely. As this was going on I jumped on another system in his department to download the same file and it did the same thing. I went back to the user that is having that problem and I re started the download about 3 times. On the third try it worked the pdf downloaded completely and boom the file opened. Now Its definitely nothing wrong with the switch or the computer itself. Does anyone know if there is anything that should be done to the network to minimize the timing out? Would prioritizing the port on which the web app runs on would help it? While this was happening another user was unable to send out e-mails. Network was probably hicupping at some point.

I think this has happened to all of us.  You download a pdf. It immediately opens in adobe reader at the bottom of the window you can watch the progress and then it stops permanently for whatever reason.  I wonder if this is a problem with adobe itself.

Instead of opening adobe reader wihin firefox to download the file try saving the file. From the firefox menu, select tools then options and then the applications tab.  Browse to adobe acrobat document and change the action to save file.

Figured it out! Thanks everyone for the help.