Fix 1: Change Internet Option Settings
When your drive location in your Internet Options is not the system drive, it can prevent you from downloading files. How to set the drive location as the system drive on Windows 10? Refer to the following tutorial.

Step 1: Press Windows + R, input control in the Run dialogue box, and hit the Enter key.

Step 2: Once Control Panel opens, click the Network and Internet option.

Step 3: Locate the Internet Options option on the right side.

choose Internet Options
Step 4: On the Internet Properties window, click the Settings button under the General tab. Then, view the drive location under Current location.

view drive location
If the drive location is C:, you can close this window and move to the next workaround. If not, continue performing the following operations.

Step 5: Click the Move folder button under Current location and select a folder in drive C:. After selecting a folder, click the OK button to save the change.

Step 6: Restart your system and see if the issue gets solved.

If you still can’t download anything, please try resetting your internet security settings.

Step 1: Reopen the Internet Properties window.

Step 2: Switch to the Security tab, click the Internet icon, and click the Custom level… button.

click the Custom level button
Step 3: Scroll to Downloads and make sure all options are enabled.

locate Downloads on the Security Settings window
Step 4: If you make certain changes, save the changes, and then restart your computer.

Fix 2: Clear Your Browser’s Cache
When you can’t download anything from a browser, clearing the browser’s cache could be helpful. Here take Google Chrome for example.

Steps to clear cache and data in Google Chrome.

Step 1: Click the three dots at the top-right corner in Google Chrome.

Step 2: Choose the More tools option from the drop-down menu.

choose More tools
Step 3: Choose the Clear browsing data from the sub-menu.

Step 4: On the Clear browsing data window, what should be done is:

Switch to the Advanced tab.
Select Time range based on your needs.
Check the boxes next to Browsing history, Cached images and files, and Cookies and other site data (optional).
Click the Clear data button.
clear data and cache in Google Chrome
When data and cache have been removed from Google Chrome, check whether you can download your files now.

Fix 3: Run SFC Scan
If system files have some issue, you can’t also download anything. You can run the SFC tool to repair these files.

Now, run the SFC tool on your computer.

Step 1: Open Command Prompt as administrator.

Type Command Prompt in the search bar.
Right-click the result and choose Run as administrator.
Step 2: On the Command Prompt window, type the command sfc/scannow command and hit the Enter key to run this command.

run sfc/scannow in Command Prompt

Step 3: Wait for the process to finish. Then, restart your computer.

Fix 4: Adjust File Type Settings on Firefox
If you can’t download anything from Firefox, there is a chance that this browser is set to handle different types of files in different ways, and this could prevent you from downloading a certain type of file.

How to change the situation? Rest the file type settings to default.

Step 1: Launch the Firefox app on your computer.

Step 2: Open the Firefox menu by clicking the three-striped button. From the menu, select Help, and select Troubleshooting information.

select Troubleshooting Information
Step 3: Locate Profile Folder in the Application Basic section. Then, click the Open Folder button following Profile Folder and a window pops up.

click Open Folder button following profile Folder
Step 4: Relaunch the Firefox menu and choose the Exit option from the menu.

Step 5: On the popping-up window, locate the handlers.json file and delete or rename it. If you choose to rename it, you can rename it “handlers.json.old”.

locate the handlers.json file
Now, you can relaunch Firefox and try downloading files again.

Fix 5: Reset Your Computer
If all the above workarounds are not helpful, the last resort you can take is to reset your computer. Here are steps.

Step 1: Click the Windows icon on the taskbar and then click the Settings icon.

Step 2: Choose the Update & security setting on the Settings window.

Step 3: Choose the Recovery option on the left side and then click the Get Started button under Reset this PC on the right side.

click the Get started button
Step 4: Choose Keep my files.

Step 5: Click Reset to actually commit.

Your computer will restart and it will boot back up again after several minutes.