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.

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