Problem with the single exe and "not a valid filetype" error

[Protocol]

I've just received my second customer who has said that they're receiving an error with my distributed .exe that states it is an invalid filetype. Both were running XP. Their system doesn't seem to recognize it at all. I've had to issue 2 refunds so far, and I would love not to have to do that again... =(

I should state that 98% of the distribution is going great, but I'd hate to have to refund random sales...

Any ideas? The exe is a self-extracting zip, right? Might it be the built-in XP unzipper or something? Corrupted driver on thier part? Perhaps a FAT32 vs. NTFS thing? Hmmm...

[Brett]

I have never heard of that one. Unfortunately from that vague description there is not much that can be done. If you can get a screencap of the error or find a customer to work with in trying to replicate and narrow the problem down, let us know.

[Protocol]

Hey Brett,

Thanks for the reply...I was hoping to compare this with any other case that might have come up for other devs, but since my 2 customers seem to be the first to have this happen I'll see if I can get more specific info from their setup. So far the only pattern I see is WinXP, but thats obviously a wide variable and may not be linked to the problem at all. Here's what they sent me:

"It won't open. I saved it on the desktop, and it showed up as an unknown file type. When I try to open it, it prompts me to select a program to run it with, obviously none work. It's an .exe file, so shouldn't it be self running/extracting? I use windows XP Home Edition."

"My system does not recognize the file type. I am running windows xp."

The program is was compiled into a single exe file and distributed fairly straight-forward. Because so many other users are using it and having no issues, I moved away from the idea that it might be a corrupted download. But just to be sure I'll resend the file to them again manually and see if they can get it working...

[Worm]

Is it possible that the file was corrupted in transfer?

(oops, I guess I should read the whole reply before shooting off my mouth)

[Lorne]

Make sure those customers don't have XP set up to hide file extensions turned on...it's possible the file was renamed by whatever tool they used to download it, and it can't be opened.

For example, many bittorrent clients rename partial files with a temporary extension while they're being downloaded. If the download was interrupted (or timed out) they could get that error.

More likely their system is just messed up (registry settings gone awry, etc.).

You can rule out the XP zip functionality, and NTFS/FAT32/FAT16, we've tested the single-file executable on all those configurations with no problems. Also, you'd be seeing a much higher incidence of error reports if that was the case.

What method did you use to distribute the files? Email? HTTP download? .torrent?

What method did they use to download it? (Even if it's an HTTP link, they may have used a resumable download client like GetRight...)

You could have the zip up the file and send it back to you for diagnosis...