More Simultaneous Downloads with IE7

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 7 has that strange limitation that you can only download two files simultaneously. This might not bother casual downloaders but what if you have to download many files in a short time ? Sure, you could use a download manager to download all the files and forget about the limit in Internet Explorer. A nice download manager would be for instance Orbit, which I reviewed earlier this year.

If you are on a fast connection you might not want to use a download manager anymore for the purpose of downloading relative small files from the Internet. A better way would be to boost the number of simultaneous downloads in Internet Explorer 7 from 2 to a higher number. As always the setting is hidden deep inside the registry. To start the registry press Windows + R, type regedit and hit enter.

Navigate to the key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \Internet Settings and create the following two DWord (32 bit) keys by right-clicking in the right pane. Name the first MaxConnectionsPer1_0Server and set it to a number greater than 2. This is the amount of simultaneous downloads from now on.

Create a second registry entry called MaxConnectionsPerServer and give it the same value that you have selected above. Close everything and restart your computer. I would suggest you test the settings with large enough files to see if this brought the desired effect. If you encounter problems you could reduce the number that you entered in both registry keys.

found: arsgeek