Ever since we launched the CyberSearch extension I’ve been getting a ton of emails with recommendations on what I can do to make it better, and alongside those emails are also a few dozen from people who are having troubles trying to install it. What happens to them, and I’ve had this happen to me before, is they are prompted with this warning when trying to install the extension:
Firefox could not install the file at [URL] because: Invalid file hash (possible download corruption) -261
Believe it or not this has been a known problem for quite some time, and there are a couple of different things you can try to circumvent the problem.
- Clear your cache. Go to Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> Network / Offline Storage -> Clear Now and then try reinstalling the extension.
- Enable third-party cookies. A few commenters (thanks Clark!) have pointed out that enabling third-party cookies in Firefox is also something you should do to get around the error message. To do this go to Tools -> Options -> Privacy and check the Accept third-party cookies box.
- Manually install the extension. The easiest way to do this is to just download the extension in another browser, and then drag the downloaded file into the Firefox window. This should initiate the installation process.
- Suspend ThreatFire. I’m adding this one to the list because several of our commenters (thanks Sunny!) have pointed out that ThreatFire could be one of the reasons that extensions won’t install. Temporarily suspending ThreatFire should solve the problem.
- Temporarily disable your antivirus. When all else fails the culprit could be that your antivirus application is preventing the installation of the extension. This is kind of a last resort, and not something that I really recommend doing.
Again, I apologize for those of you having issues installing the extension, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Once we manage to get enough (hopefully positive) reviews of the extension we will be able to get CyberSearch out of the experimental stage. From what I’ve read after that happens the “invalid file hash” errors shouldn’t really happen anymore. So if you’ve got a spare second go drop by the Mozilla site and leave a review for our extension.
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Tags: Firefox, Google, Software, Web Sites, Windows, CyberSearch, Firefox 3, Firefox Extensions
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If you have this problem you should also try deletting these 3 files from you firefox profile folder :
extensions.ini
extensions.cache
extensions.rdf
Profile location :
Windows XP : C:\Documents and Settings\[User Name]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
Windows Vista : C:\users\[User Name]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
Make sure Firefox is closed when deleting these files.
Firefox will regenerate these files on restart.
I have this problem when I try to install extensions while the popular ThreatFire security program is running. I just right-click in the taskbar and “suspend” while I install the extension.
Thanks so much for this post. I’ve been having this problem with other extensions and had no idea what to do. It is probably the cache problem on one machine. On the other is probably the ThreatFire program that Sunny commented about. Thanks Sunny. I don’t know if I would have figured that one out.
I spent several evenings trying to get add-ons to work with Firefox 3 before realising ThreatFire was to blame.
Thanks Sunny! I’ve added that to the list. I haven’t used ThreatFire much so I wouldn’t have guessed that it would cause a problem.
After trying all of the above unsuccessfully, I traced through the linked bug and found a suggestion to enable 3rd party cookies (which I had disabled). That was the trick for me - it installed fine after I did that.
Thanks for the info Clark! Glad you got it installed.
Enabling third party cookies did it for me as well… add that to your list !
Thanks, we’ve added it to the list since more than one person has confirmed this as a possible problem.
I had the same problem downloading the extension. I noticed that when I did a “right-click, save-as” to try saving the .xpi file to disk, I instead got a file called ‘login’. It’s as if the login didn’t work, and it’s trying to get my to login in again. Making a new profile, logging in there, right-clicking and saving the .xpi to disk from there and then loading it in the original profile worked for me.