Your internet connection can be uncertain at times, and a sudden drop in the connectivity while downloading a large file can be frustrating. Sometimes, you might have to download the file from scratch because Chrome can’t detect the file fragment you just downloaded.
If you’re on a limited bandwidth plan or your ISP throttles the data after you exceed the fair usage limit, the consequences of an interrupted download can prove expensive. Let’s see how to resume failed downloads in Google Chrome.
Cause for Partial Downloads
We cannot entirely blame Chrome for interrupted downloads. There are a few reasons why a partial or incomplete download can occur.
- The web server doesn’t allow you to resume a download and forces it to start from the beginning.
- If your internet connection is slow or the server gets overloaded with requests, then a timeout can result in incomplete downloads.
- The source file is corrupted. In such a case, you’ll experience a partial download no matter which browser you use.
Use Chrome’s Download Manager to Resume Downloads
Google Chrome has a built-in download manager to display all your downloads—whether it’s active, failed, canceled, or completed. Press Ctrl + J or click the Options dropdown menu and select Downloads to open the download manager.
In the list of downloads, find the failed item and click Resume. If everything goes right, your download will resume from where it got interrupted.
Resume Interrupted Download With Wget
If the download fails to resume, you can try Wget. It’s a free, command-line tool to download files from the web. Wget is excellent over slow or unstable network connections. If a download fails, it’ll keep retrying until the whole file transfers to your computer.
There are many versions of Wget available for Windows 10. Head to Eternally Bored to download the latest 64-bit build. Drag the executable file to
C:\Users\[User Name]\Downloads
Now, you can run Wget in two ways: Change to the directory that has the executable with the cd command or adds it as an environment variable so that you can access it from any directory. We recommend you to use the latter if you plan on using Wget frequently.
Let’s set it up as an environment variable.
Setting Up Wget
Navigate to Control Panel > System and click Advanced System Settings. In the window that opens, click Environment Variables.
Select Path under System variables and click Edit. Then, click on the New button located at the upper-right corner of the window. Type:
C:\Users\[User Name]\Downloads\wget.exe
Click OK.
Open Command Prompt and type “wget -h” to test if everything works. In PowerShell type “wget.exe -h” to load the Wget help menu.
Rename the Partially Downloaded File
To rename your file, we need two essential bits of information—website URL and location of the partially downloaded file.
Press Ctrl + J to open the download manager. Locate the file, right-click the source file’s website, and then select Copy link address. Paste your link in the Notepad.
Now, click More and choose Open downloads folder.
When your file gets partially downloaded, Chrome gives a default name of “Unconfirmed [Random Number].crdownload.”
The .crdownload extension is a byproduct of Chrome. You can neither open or convert it to another format. Once you download completes, it gets removed.
You can get the original filename quickly from the website URL. If the link is
http://mirrors.evowise.com/linuxmint/stable/19.3/linuxmint-19.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso
then your filename is Linux mint–19.3-cinnamon–64-bit.iso. Right-click the partially downloaded file and select Rename. Remove the .crdownload extension from the end of the file and press Enter.
A message will warn you that the file might become unusable if you change the extension. Click Yes.
If you see a weird message “File in Use,” then find out the error preventing you from renaming the file. In Chrome, it is a particular process that’s causing all the problems.
Note: Do not quit Chrome, or else it’ll delete the file from your system.
Resume Your Download with Wget
To resume your download through Wget, you need the file path of the target download file and the website URL.
Press and hold the Shift key, then right-click your file and select Copy as path. Also, copy-and-paste the website URL you copied earlier. Paste these two bits of information in Notepad.
Now we’ll use the Wget command
wget -c -O "[file-path-of-the-target-download-file]""[website-URL]"
Replace the parameters defined in square brackets with actual data. Press Enter to resume the download.
Do not forget to enclose the path in inverted commas.
wget -c -O "C:\Users\Rahul\Downloads\linuxmint-19.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso""http://mirrors.evowise.com/linuxmint/stable/19.3/linuxmint-19.3-cinnamon-64bit.iso"
Third-Party Apps With Superior Download Manager
While Google Chrome has improved a lot in terms of stability and user experience, the native download manager lacks essential features like resuming incomplete downloads, scheduling, download acceleration, and more.
Internet Download Manager
It is the most popular download manager for Windows. When you install the app, its built-in extension deeply integrates with Chrome and allows IDM to intercept URLs. The download segmentation feature accelerates the download speed considerably.
IDM error recovery and resume capability will restart broken or interrupted downloads due to lost network connections, unexpected shutdown, or power outages. Other features include download categories, scheduler, queue processor, progressive download with quotas, and more.
EagleGet Download Manager
It is a free alternative to IDM. The app has a simple and intuitive interface and uses a similar kind of multi-threading technology to speed up your downloads. The resume ability is not as powerful as IDM. But nevertheless, it is a feature-rich download manager.
Continue Incomplete Downloads With Ease
With high internet speed and almost unlimited data, partial or incomplete downloads aren’t a big problem. If an interruption occurs, resuming your download through Wget is quick and easy. If the file is large or if your internet connection is spotty, it’s better to download the file with Wget.
Wget is a versatile command-line utility that can do quite a few things with a single command. Did you know that with Wget and a few simple scripts, you can save multiple webpages into PDFs How to Convert Multiple Webpages Into PDFs With WgetWant to archive some web pages to read later on any device? The answer is to convert those websites to PDF with Wget.
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