Chrome Downloads Failing or Stuck at 100%
Short answer
A download that reaches 100% then says "Failed - Network error" did not fail on the network. Chrome finished the transfer and something blocked the final write — usually antivirus real-time scanning or a full disk. Try the same file in a Guest window, and change your download folder to a plain local folder rather than a synced one.
On this page
A download crawls to 100%, pauses, and reports Failed - Network error. Or it sits at 0% and never starts. Or it works in Edge and not in Chrome.
The error message is actively misleading in the first case. If the bar reached
the end, the bytes arrived — your network did its job. What failed is what
happens next, when Chrome renames its temporary .crdownload file to the real
filename and hands it to the filesystem. Nearly everything that goes wrong at
that moment is local.
Narrow it in three minutes
Run these in order. Each one eliminates a whole category.
| Test | If it works | If it fails too |
|---|---|---|
| Same file in a Guest window | Extension or profile fault | Not an extension |
| Same file in a different browser | Chrome-specific | Antivirus, disk or network |
| A different file from a different site | The first server’s fault | Your machine |
A Guest window takes five seconds to open from the profile icon and runs with no extensions at all, which is why it goes first.
The failure at 100%: what is actually blocking it
Antivirus real-time scanning
This is the most common cause by a wide margin. Security software hooks the moment a new file is written, scans it, and if the scan is slow or the verdict is uncertain, it locks or quarantines the file. Chrome sees the write fail and reports the only error it has.
Do not turn your antivirus off to test this. Downloading files with protection disabled is precisely the wrong time to be unprotected.
Instead:
- Add your Downloads folder as an exclusion in the antivirus settings.
- Or find the separate web shield / download scanning module and disable that one module, leaving file and behaviour protection running.
- On Windows Defender specifically: Windows Security → Virus & threat protection → Manage settings → Exclusions. Check Protection history on the same screen first, because a quarantined file is listed there by name and confirms the diagnosis outright.
A synced or network download folder
If your Downloads folder lives inside OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive or a mapped network drive, the sync client grabs the file the instant it appears and can hold a lock while Chrome is still finalising it. Large files fail more often than small ones for exactly this reason.
Change the destination to a plain local folder:
chrome://settings/downloads → Change → pick something like
C:\Users\[you]\Downloads that nothing syncs. On the same page, turn on Ask
where to save each file if you want to decide per download.
OneDrive redirecting your user folders is common on new Windows installs and catches people out; how OneDrive fills up your C drive explains how to see whether your folders have been redirected.
No disk space
Chrome needs room for the temporary file and the final file at the same time, so a 4GB download briefly wants closer to 8GB free. A disk with 2GB free will fail a large download at the end every single time.
Check the free space on the drive holding your Downloads folder. Freeing up disk space on Windows covers what is safe to remove when it is genuinely full.
Permissions on the folder
Less common, but it happens after migrating a user profile or restoring from a backup. If you cannot create a new text file in the Downloads folder manually, Chrome cannot write there either. Switching the download location to a folder you can write to confirms it in seconds.
Downloads that never start
A download that does not begin at all is a different problem from one that dies at the end.
Check chrome://downloads first. Chrome lists blocked downloads there even
when the notification was dismissed, and the entry will say why — “Blocked”,
“Dangerous file”, or “Insecure download blocked”.
- Insecure download blocked means the page was HTTPS but the file came over plain HTTP. Chrome blocks that mixed case because the file could have been altered in transit. The site needs to fix it; you should not work around it for an executable.
- Dangerous file is Safe Browsing. The item in
chrome://downloadshas a Keep option. Use it only for a file whose source you genuinely trust — Safe Browsing flags unsigned and rarely-downloaded executables, which catches a lot of legitimate small-developer software and also a lot of malware. - Nothing listed at all points at an extension intercepting the download, or a site using a script-based download that an ad blocker killed. The Guest window test settles it.
Reset Chrome’s download state
When downloads have become unreliable in general rather than for one file, the download history database is a plausible culprit. It is a small SQLite file in your profile and it does occasionally corrupt.
Clearing download history is harmless — it removes the list, not the files: chrome://settings/delete-browsing-data → Advanced → tick Download history only, time range All time.
Leave Cookies and other site data and Passwords unticked. There is no reason to sign out of everything to fix a download problem, and what each of those checkboxes actually destroys is worth reading before you tick anything extra.
If that does not help and a Guest window also fails, the profile is a suspect and a fresh one is the next test.
When it is the server, not you
Some failures are genuinely remote, and they have a recognisable shape:
- The download fails at a different percentage each time — an unstable connection or a server dropping long transfers.
- It fails only on one site, and works on others — their host or CDN.
- Resume works and gets a little further each attempt — a server timeout rather than a block.
For large files on flaky connections, chrome://downloads has a Resume
button on failed items. It works when the server supports range requests, which
most large-file hosts do and most small ones do not. Downloading over ethernet
rather than Wi-Fi genuinely helps for multi-gigabyte files, and
Wi-Fi that is slow despite a strong signal
covers why a strong bar count does not mean a stable throughput.
What to expect
Antivirus and synced download folders between them explain most of the “Failed - Network error at 100%” cases, and both are fixed by changing a setting rather than by anything dramatic.
A reasonable sequence that takes under ten minutes: check the antivirus quarantine log, move the download folder somewhere local, confirm free disk space, then test in a Guest window.
If a specific file from a specific site fails in three browsers on two machines, stop. The file is not reachable and no local change will make it so.