I think what I'd do is to use a program like Sysinternals 'Process Monitor'
to observe in real time where the downloads are being written to.

Process Monitor v2.04
[url]http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896645.aspx[/url]

Then start a download in Firefox / Google talk to observe what is happening.

--
Jon



"dferrantino" <guest@unknown-email.com> wrote in message
news:8a17d23460c3ded9a5a89cec4624a635@nntp-gateway.com...[color=blue]
>
> Hi, I've seen this problem posted a number of times, and either there's
> no fix for it or it was attributed to something that doesn't apply to my
> situation. Here's the description:
>
>
> - With Firefox and Google Talk, any downloaded file cannot be opened
> by the program.
> - IE8 and Chrome both work, and since I use Chrome for everything, I
> never noticed the issue in Firefox. File transfer in Google Talk has
> been screwed since I installed Vista.
> - It happens when they're run in Administrator Mode as well
> - The files do not appear in the specified Download directory (my
> User\Download folder)
> - A search shows that the files do not exist -anywhere- on any of my
> HDs
> - The files aren't in AppData\Temp either
> - I do NOT have AVG, nor have I ever had it installed on any of my
> HDs, ever
> - The account I use is the original account I created on install, and
> has Administrator privileges
> - I have already granted special permissions for all Users to
> Create/Modify files within the folder
> - The User folders are not in their original location. They've been
> moved to a separate HD specifically for Docs/Downloads.
>
>
> The most common answer I see is "Turn off UAC," but I see that as a
> last resort and would prefer a different solution. I'm tempted to just
> switch to 7 today and deal with the RC but I'm wary of the problem not
> being fixed there either. Does -anybody- have any idea?
>
>
> --
> dferrantino[/color]

"dferrantino" <guest@unknown-email.com> wrote in message
news:7b34d6cadcef044ddba4a9eae9aea58a@nntp-gateway.com...[color=blue]
>
> I managed to fix it in Firefox (known issue in Firefox3 with the
> automatic antivirus scan, turned it off in about:config and it works
> now) but I will check this out with Google Talk. Not at home right now
> to check, but if you could give me a quick rundown on how to use Process
> Monitor to check where it's going to make this as quick and painless as
> possible I'd appreciate it.
>[/color]



It works by placing "filters" on the mass of computer activity that is
happening on your machine, to focus on whatever it is you wish to monitor,
be it a registry key, an executable, a file or whatever.

So the way I was envisaging its usage here was ....

1. Place a filter on the executable for the browser. So for Internet
Explorer it would be iexplore.exe or ieuser.exe, and for firefox it would be
firefox.exe etc [ via the menus Filter > Filter ]
2. Click on the [Show..activity] toolbar buttons to further limit it to file
activity only (as opposed to registry activity etc)

You can then observe in real time, file writes, file reads etc. involving
that executable.

--
Jon