Microsoft Internet Explorer limits the simultaneous downloads to only two at a time by default. So if you try to download more than two files from the same website, you can download only two files at the same time – more downloads start only after first ones have finished downloading. This is true for all version of Internet Explorer from versions 7 to 9. But you can increase the number of simultaneous downloads in Internet Explorer by doing a Registry hack. Here is how :
- Press the keyboard shortcut Windows logo ley + R to open the Run dialog.
- Type regedit in the Run dialog and press Enter to start the Registry Editor.
- Navigate to the following key in the Registry Editor
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMAINFeatureControlFEATURE_MAXCONNECTIONSPER1_0SERVER
- You would find the value named explorer.exe in the right side pane. Double-click on it and change its value to 10. This would make the maximum connections on one server (website) to be 10.
- Similarly, navigate to the following key in the Registry Editor
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMAINFeatureControlFEATURE_MAXCONNECTIONSPERSERVER
- Double-click on the value named explorer.exe in the right pane and change its value to 10.
- Internet Explorer should be able to download 10 simultanoues files from the same server or different servers.
Alternatively you can also download the registry entries file from ie_simultaneous_downloads.zip. Extract the contents to a folder and double-click on ie_10_simultaneous_downloads.reg to automatically set the number of simultaneous downloads to 10. If later you decide to revert back to 2 downloads, then you can double-click on ie_default_simultaneous_downloads.reg.