I used the GOG Downloader yesterday to download my first purchased games: Baldur's Gate I & II, a total of roughly 4 GB. I went out and when I came back a few hours later, I noticed my computer (a very basic Dual Core Windows XP box) almost crashed. Opening Task Manager I saw the downloader was using 1.5 GB (yes, GB) of my 2 GB RAM! o_O I managed to close it, and load it again, at which point it was consuming just a few MB. But after two hours or so it was already in the 200 MB range.

For comparison's sake, when I installed WoW, a 8 to 12 GB download, its installer never went above 30 MB. So, it's clear GOG Downloader's code has some serious memory leaks issues.

Other than that, things went smoothly and the games downloaded successfully.

To be on the safe side I've switched to downloading in Firefox...so far so good at least.

I think I've given up on the GOG Downloader. It keeps stopping and throwing up an error like everyone else, on every single one of my downloads. Every time I get said error, when/if I ever get the download finished it's ALWAYS corrupt.

I guess at this point I'm either going to use a download manager or try to download it in one go through my web browser.

I have experienced a similar behavior with my Downloader.
I am using Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and my machine specs are: Intel Core2Duo T5600@1.83GHz with 2Gb of DDR3 RAM.

Symptoms:
After a couple of hours running the Downloader was hogging up 1.2 Gb or RAM and the number was still slowly going up. System was suffering severe performance degradation.
I closed the downloader, but it was still resident in the memory (GoG.com Downloader.exe*32) a few minutes after closing it and the memory was not being freed. Also had lots of hard drive activity.

Quick temporary solution:
Terminated the process trough task manager and restarted the client. Everything went back to normal.

Solution:
Kindly requesting a fix for the memory leak in the downloader, and the ability to download the bonus content using the downloader as well.

Regards,

Timo "SoanoS Ahola

For a while the downloader worked well, but recently all I get is crashes and error messages (ooops this and oops that). I've stopped using the downloader: I get much better results with my browser.

GOG is based on digital distribution, so they really should have a decent downloader service. The current downloader is crap.

https works already. It is a curious idea to remake (badly) stuff that works great.

Well in my case, the downloader sometimes crashes when launching.
I get an Adobe Air error message stating that the application failed to start.
But i have been able to download, pause and resume without any file corruption or crashes.

I am running WIN XP 32bits PROFESSIONAL with SP3.

Update: I can also confirm the memory leak. When i start the app it uses about 20 MBs.
After about 45-50 minutes the app is consuming 70 MBs. If i pause the download, it stills uses 70 MBs. But if i quit the app and start over it returns to 20 MBs. Since i don´t leave my computer downloading for several hours that's probably why i haven't seen those crashes and file corruption that everyone is talking about.

I never use the downloader but just the "browser" option. Most browsers (e.g. Opera) have integrated downloaders that can continue from a paused/broken download.

That would be fine.. But that never works for me.
Whenever I resume using my browser (tried firefox and chrome) it either says 403 forbidden. Or works, but then download ends up corrupted...

They really need to use servers that properly support resuming and download managers. Forcing us to install adobe crapware that constantly crashes isn't a soultion.

They do this for security reasons. If anyone could just use any downloader it might make it possible for someone to download a game they don't legally own here.

This is also why you can't resume from HTTP when downloading through your browser. I asked about this a while ago. Unfortunately, as much as I hate to say it, I can't really disagree with them. I mean, they do need to protect things enough to prevent every single potential pirate from just downloading straight from their site. (If nothing else they don't want to waste the bandwidth on non-paying people since those people obviously didn't help cover the costs of the servers.)

I believe I have the same problem. See the attached image for exactly what I see when I start it. I tried reinstalling (and checking for a newer version) but the problem remains. Oh, and I'm running it with administrative privileges (it really seems to get unhappy it if I don't give it admin privileges...) I even tried updating my copy of AdobeAir to no avail. I discovered that if I right click on the task in the taskbar, I can choose the option to change the size, stretch it vertically, and then I can reach the login textboxes to type in my login info, but I still can't click the button to actually log in no matter how hard I try.

This almost looks like it's trying to display an ad or some other info on startup, but whatever it's trying to show never loads? Anyone have any idea how to fix this? My connection isn't really the fastest in the world and I really need to be able to resume downloads so I can reboot, download other things, or whatever depending on the situation.


Really, I can't help but to think that what we need is a simple downloader written in something more efficient than Adobe AIR (or Java or whatever.) As far as being multi-platform friendly goes, I wonder about just making something in C++ using standardized libraries? In fact, you could surely borrow from things like libcurl, wget, or whatever? This way it could work in Windows, linux, MacOSX, and so on just by compiling a binary for each platform. Ok, you end up with 3+ binaries rather than one and people have to download the correct one for their OS, but otherwise it's really not that much messier to deal with than a single generic installer. That would make all of this FAR more reliable and efficient without huge memory leaks and other such problems... (Well, sadly, my own programming knowledge is too limited to help in any way with this, but the GoG downloader really strikes me as not requiring very complex code to actually verify the account and everything and the actual downloads themselves should be able to more or less use standard libraries without even having to be rewritten.)

BTW, I wonder if this crashing may be related to the memory leaks? Windows actually can only allow up to just approximately 1.5GB for one 32-bit process due to the way MS designed memory handling in Windows NT. Exceed that limit and said process will crash. (Even 64-bit Windows does nothing to fix this as any 32-bit processes still have 32-bit limitations even in 64-bit Windows.) I've seen this firsthand a lot with certain things such as inefficient games like Oblivion that, when set wrong, could exceed that limit and crash every time the moment they do. I have 4GB and my 32-bit Windows is setup correctly to be able to use roughly 3.2GB of that (and my 64-bit Windows is of course able to use it all) and both are well optimized to minimize how many resources they use, but no matter what I did I couldn't keep any of those applications or games from crashing once they exceeded ~1.5GB of memory usage. For the best examples of this though, look at CAD programs, many of which can very easily exceed that limit if you're not careful. Interestingly enough, so far I haven't experienced any crashes with the downloader. I haven't looked at its memory usage before however.

I open a tech issue in the suport area and there says that the message i send will be displayed in "my account" area in five minutes but don't have until now, hours later... may i have to open a new one? How i confirm the message was really open?
Well in anyway the message was about problems with the Gog downloader, that is very slow and keep showing problems, stoping the download many times, for many errors.
After losting my patience i am downloading the game i buyed, DarkStar One, by torrent... see?
So i pay for nothing, because i yet con't download from GOG in an acceptable maner/speed (gog is slow and show problmes, other down manager don't resume).
This game is of 4.1 GB, but it is ok, the torrent is working and is fast enough... i only payed $ 4,99 for nothing... i wil survive... U.U

PS.: i really don't want excuses for this post questioning about problems with the downloader is from 2008, so if in 2 years you don't correct this i dont know if it is your will to do so...
I simple wanted a good service or my money back, if you don't mind, because the games sold here we all can get in others ways by the net, but the preference for the GOG is to pay a good price and to confer prstige to manufacturers of the games and to GOG...
Thanks

I've been here since this site had only a handful of games. I love GOG and I have utmost respect for CD Projeckt, but the downloader is disappointing. Please make a new one. :)

I would really like to be able to schedule when my downloads start and stop. Unfortunately my ISP only allows me to download 425mb per 24hours, except during the hours of 3am and 8am, and I'm not one to be awake at 3am to start a download. So the ability to schedule downloads to start and stop automatically is paramount.

This is something I can do with my own Download Manager, however, as GOG uses temporary links when downloading I can't resume a download with my download manager.

I'm wondering if anyone can help me - I can't even get the Downloader to install. When I try Adobe AIR gives me the error "The application could not be installed because the installer file is damaged. Try obtaining a new installer file from the application author."

Anyone else get this error and/or know what to do about it?

I've restarted the computer and I've re-downloaded it a number of times to no avail.