Can firmware cause corrupt downloads in Chrome?

[Tabs]

Guys, I think this really was it. I did a bunch of browsing and downloading this weekend with that 3.2.12.0 driver I found and everything's been fine, no corruption thusfar. On top of that, I had a bug report going on the Chromium bug tracker and another guy with the issue reported that he too had a PCE-N13 - he's trying the driver too now and I expect he'll see the same positive results I did.

I'm still really baffled that it only affects Chrome though - I tried a bunch with FF and IE and never saw the corruption there. How is that possible for something that's acting at the driver level to only manifest in one application?

 

[abelenky]

I'm having the same problem.

My story in brief:
I upgraded to RaLink 5.0.21.0, and immediately started seeing lots of corrupt images in Chrome.

At the same time, I downloaded some MASSIVE satellite image files (from http://www.megasceneryearth.com/store/, not that it matters), and every one of them came back corrupt, even though it seemed to be a successful download.

I rolled back my driver, and the problems immediately vanished.

A few weeks later, Windows Update automatically rolled me forward to the new drivers, and the problems re-appeared again. I consider that pretty conclusive proof.

I know some people have been surprised that it is browser specific, but remember that browsers do some pretty complex things behind the scenes. To me it seems likely that the driver bug is somehow triggered by the exact access pattern Chrome is using (How many simultaneous connections it uses... in which order it gets links, the exact timing of the downloads, etc). Chrome may also be attempting advanced protocols like SPDY that other browsers don't use.

Anyway, here's a screenshot of what I'm talking about
(with corrupt images circled in red).

I'm absolutely convinced that MediaTek/RaLink have a really big bug on their hands, and need to roll back this driver. After all, if it can do this, it could corrupt banking transfers or medical records too!

http://postimg.org/image/pcfpn937r/

 

[PrivateJoker]

It would be interesting to see if through the info available in chrome:

chrome://net-internals/#export
(various drop downs)

or toggling some of its inner workings here:

chrome://flags/

if it could be narrowed down to find what in Chrome is making it perform like this with that driver.

I'm guessing Chrome is trying to take advantage of something baked into it to try to load quicker and crapping out, that other browsers don't use???

The images you were d/ling, were they literally pictures (.jpg, .tiff, etc.)? I saw the screenshot you uploaded and it looked like it was just the .jpgs it was screwing up. Maybe it's something to do with the handling/rendering of compressed images.

 

[sk1887]

this happened to me too
culprit was asus usb n13. i kept getting corrupt downloads yet it happened with internet download manager (which uses loads of connections to make downloads faster)
anyway i changed usb card since then, didn't know the problem was the driver!

 

[PrivateJoker]

this happened to me too
culprit was asus usb n13. i kept getting corrupt downloads yet it happened with internet download manager (which uses loads of connections to make downloads faster)
anyway i changed usb card since then, didn't know the problem was the driver!

Were you also getting corrupt images like the poster above?