Forum FAQ: You cannot open some IIS 7.5-hosted PDF documents by using a Web browser that has the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in enabled.
Symptom
Consider the following scenario:
•
You install Internet Information Services (IIS) 7.5 on a computer that is running Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, or Windows Server 2008 R2.
•
You host some Portable Document Format (PDF) documents on an IIS Web site on this computer.
•
You have a client computer that has the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in enabled on a Web browser.
•
You use this Web browser to open one of the PDF documents that is hosted on the IIS Web site.
In this scenario, you cannot open the PDF document. Additionally, the Web browser may stop responding.
Note
• You may still be able to open other PDF documents on this IIS Web site when this issue occurs.
• This issue does not affect all versions of the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in.
Cause
This issue occurs because of a design change in IIS 7.5.
When you try to open a PDF document on an IIS Web site, the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in sends a request that includes multiple byte ranges to IIS 7.5. If the union of the multiple byte ranges is a single byte range, the response from IIS 7.5 contains the byte
ranges merged into a single byte range (also known as a merged byte-range request). The response to this single byte range does not include the
multipart/byteranges content type. However, the multipart/byteranges
content type is expected to be included in a response to a merged byte-range request. This behavior causes the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in to handle the response incorrectly. Therefore, the PDF document cannot be opened.
Note The multipart/byteranges content type is included in a regular multiple byte-ranges response.
Resolution
Download and install the hot fix described in the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article on the computer that is running IIS 7.5:
979543
You cannot open some IIS 7.5-hosted PDF documents by using a Web browser that has the Adobe PDF Reader plug-in enabled
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;979543
Applies to
Windows 7
Windows Server 2008 R2
Microsoft Internet Information Services 7.5
October 13th, 2010 9:56pm