Configure IIS to allow downloads for file types

May 26, 2025

I was recently in a bit of a bind and needed to get a large file from a server to another workstation, the server had IIS and was already live on the internet but when I copied across the file and tried to download it but was getting a 404 File not found. The file extension was .bak which isn’t a file type that IIS understands whether to execute or stream or present to a web browser in a different way. We can easily instruct IIS to perform a stream of the content to the web browser, which triggers a download.

Going into the Server Level, then click on MIME Types, once there we can click on Add… under the Actions blade on the right, you can then enter the file extension, whether it’s .bak or .iso or something else. Then configure the MIME type to be as follows

application/octet-stream

Click OK and then just restart the web service. You should then be able to download the file.

Activating Windows 8.1 clients on a KMS Host running Windows Server 2008 R2

I was recently helping out a friend who had a KMS server activating their Windows 7 machines but when they started moving their fleet to Windows 8.1 they saw they couldn’t install the KMS Host product key for Windows 8.1 recieving the following error: 0xc004f015: The Software Licensing Service reported that the license is not […]

Finding the location of a device using an IP or MAC Address in HP intelligent Management Centre IMC (like you could in ProCurve Manager)

I was out at a client recently helping to clean up their iMC implementation and make some recommendations regarding their network setup. I was asked if you could look up Switch and Port number location of an end user device like you could in ProCurve Manager (PCM). Sure you can, the feature has been around […]

How to spoof or mimic a hardware or MAC Address of another device on an interface on a FortiGate

I was recently out at a client and they were in the process of getting another link installed, which happened to be Cable internet which they were using for redundancy. We put their cable modem in Bridge mode but the connection wasn’t coming up after connecting everything up. Most cable providers authenticate with certificates […]