Regarding problems accessing FTP Service using Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer

Please note the problems discussed below affect all FTP services, not just DriveHQ's FTP service. Apparently, recent updates in Windows and Internet Explorer caused the problems (mainly affecting Windows 8and IE 10 users). Searching on the Internet, you can easily find a lot of reports about these problems, e.g.:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ieitprocurrentver/thread/4ec48d5f-741c-404b-b027-90e6ea2a11dc

Unfortunately, Microsoft is slow to acknowledge or fix the problems.

There are two major problems:

(1) When you open an FTP site in Internet Explorer using the following FTP URL: ftp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@ftp.drivehq.com/, Internet Explorer will display the folder / file list correctly. However, when you click on a folder, it reports an error.

Using a network monitoring tool, you can see IE has created two separate connections: the first connection correctly logs on with the USERNAME and PASSWORD and retrieves the folder and file list.

When you click on a folder, it creates a second FTP connection. Here, IE is indeed stupid! Instead of logging on using the same username and password, it attempts to log on as an anonymous user. If the FTP site supports anonymous logon, then the second connection will not be logged on as the correct username. Therefore, it cannot access any folders in the user's account.

Workarounds:

(a) Use a different web browser, such as Firefox or Chrome.

(b) Disable anonymous FTP access on the FTP server side (only works if you are an FTP site administrator). For Paid DriveHQ members, you can use proftp.drivehq.com, which is offered to paid members only, and it does not allow anonymous FTP logon. Interestingly, when an FTP server does not allow anonymous logon, IE 10 will attempt to logon again using the correct username and password. (Anonymous FTP access without logon using ftp.drivehq.com still works fine. You must have published a folder on www.DriveHQ.com to use this feature.)

(c) Use HTTP instead. You can log on www.drivehq.com using IE. The interface is not as simple as FTP, but then it also offers a lot more features. You can also use other FTP client software, such as FileZilla, or better, use DriveHQ FileManager or WebDAV Drive Mapping.

(2) Windows Explorer cannot open any files in an FTP folder. It opens an IE windows with an empty file.

Using Windows Explorer (or My Computer. Note Windows Explorer is not the same as IE) to open an FTP folder with the following URL:

ftp://USERNAME:PASSWORD@ftp.drivehq.com/

(or ftp://USERNAME@ftp.drivehq.com/ and then logon,

or ftp://ftp.drivehq.com/USERNAME/PUBLISH_NAME if you have published a folder.)

It correctly displays the FTP folders and files. You can navigate to different folders and browse file and folder lists. When you double click on a file to open it, Windows Explorer will launch an Internet Explorer window to open the file. The file location points to a local temp folder, e.g.:

C:\Users\WINDOWS_USERNAME\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\B5TPE5SG\SampleText[1].txt

However, the file size is always 0. So you cannot open any files.

Workarounds:

(a) Instead of double clicking to open the file(s), you can drag & drop, or copy & paste the files/folders to a local folder. You can then open the file(s) in a local folder.

(b) If you just want to view or open files via FTP, you can use Internet Explorer or other web browsers. When using Internet Explorer, please use ftp.drivehq.com for anonymous FTP access. If you need to logon, then use proftp.drivehq.com.

(c) Use HTTP instead. You can log on www.drivehq.com using IE. The interface is not as simple as FTP, but then it also offers a lot more features. You can also use other FTP client software such as FileZilla, or better, use DriveHQ FileManager or WebDAV Drive Mapping.