Yes, the problem is now fixed. And thankfully it was not a bagel infection, whatever the frack that was.
So last night I downloaded a text file containing the string for a build for my assassin on Guild Wars, and when I opened it to check it I found nothing. Then this morning I opened an anime episode I'd downloaded a few days ago and the only thing that happened was the launcher program loaded. So I got suspicious.
Looked at the download folder I have, and anything I've downloaded recently listed 0 KB beside it. And I was quite positive I watched these downloads happen, and that two of them took twenty minutes. So to Google I went (as per usual), and and upon typing "download files" I was given the option "download files are empty", so I was slightly happier and took it.
After scrolling past an explicitly detailed version of my same problem, along with various and sundry other details, I found this.
Alright. I found what worked for me. I remembered I had changed anti-virus applications a while back and because Firefox scans the files after they are downloaded, it must've been confused with a different anti-virus.
I went to about:config then browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone and changed that to false.
Now my downloads work. Yay!
Now my downloads work. HOORAY.
[old posts on ensuing pages]
