Windows compatibility error downloading exe files in PHP - php

Question

I have set up a page using php and mysql that requires user to log in to download various paid for programs. They can click on a link as here and the program downloads and runs correctly.
$c3 = mysql_result($result,$i,"exe");
echo "<a href='$c3'>... etc
However, RT-click properties lets them see the path to that file, so I changed the above to:
$c3="downloads3.php?link=".mysql_result($result,$i,"exe");
Where downloads3.php is as follows:
<?php
$file = $_GET['link'];
$size = filesize($file);
$type = filetype($file);
$path = "../downloads/";
header('Content-Type: $type');
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: Binary");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$path.$file");
header("Content-Length: ".filesize($file));
readfile($file_url);?>
?>
It finds the correct file and I get a security warning but on clicking run anyway it immediately gives a windows error message that the file is not compatible with this version of windows. Must be something in the above header but can't figure out what. Tried various permutations.
Any brill ideas, either of getting the above to work or other ways of hiding the source path? Thanks.

Answer 1

It's far more likely that the EXE is getting corrupted due to unexpected output. Your downloads3.php file has some extra output that will appear in the download:
readfile($file_url);?> //PHP stops parsing here
?> //output "\n?>"
The PE header itself tells Windows what versions it can run on, so if any errors get generated before the file gets sent, they'll appear in the place Windows is expecting the header.
To mitigate this you can remove the extra newline and ?> at the end of the file and turn error reporting off with error_reporting(0) at the top of the file.

Answer 2

The Best solution for here to get download file with any name what do you have want
function force_download($filename = '', $data = '')
{
if ($filename == '' OR $data == '')
{
return FALSE;
}
// Try to determine if the filename includes a file extension.
// We need it in order to set the MIME type
if (FALSE === strpos($filename, '.'))
{
return FALSE;
}
// Grab the file extension
$x = explode('.', $filename);
$extension = end($x);
// Load the mime types
if (defined('ENVIRONMENT') AND is_file(APPPATH.'config/'.ENVIRONMENT.'/mimes'.EXT))
{
include(APPPATH.'config/'.ENVIRONMENT.'/mimes'.EXT);
}
elseif (is_file(APPPATH.'config/mimes'.EXT))
{
include(APPPATH.'config/mimes'.EXT);
}
// Set a default mime if we can't find it
if ( ! isset($mimes[$extension]))
{
$mime = 'application/octet-stream';
}
else
{
$mime = (is_array($mimes[$extension])) ? $mimes[$extension][0] : $mimes[$extension];
}
// Generate the server headers
if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], "MSIE") !== FALSE)
{
header('Content-Type: "'.$mime.'"');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$filename.'"');
header('Expires: 0');
header('Cache-Control: must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0');
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header('Pragma: public');
header("Content-Length: ".strlen($data));
}
else
{
header('Content-Type: "'.$mime.'"');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$filename.'"');
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
header('Expires: 0');
header('Pragma: no-cache');
header("Content-Length: ".strlen($data));
}
exit($data);
}
$data = 'Here is some text!';
$name = 'mytext.txt';
force_download($name, $data);

Answer 3

DOH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Too much cutting and pasting, that code has a really stupid error readfile($file_url) should be readfile($file), no wonder my 36Mb file was only 1KB after download, it was empty!
Thanks for all the comments, apologies for wasting your time.