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Asked: 2026-05-12T19:32:59+00:00

I have a home-grown HTTPS server that serves up simple files (it’s embedded within

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I have a home-grown HTTPS server that serves up simple files (it’s embedded within my app). It works great — been using it forever.

Recently added SSL support — Chrome, FireFox and IE all like it and load pages just fine.

The problem I find is when I try to load a PDF file over the HTTPS connection. For some reason, the PDF never displays in IE 8 (64-bit on 64-bit Vista). It works fine in Chrome.
And it works fine in IE 8 when using plain HTTP — only fails when using HTTPS.

NOTE: When IE 8 is mentioned, it’s 32-bit IE 8 on 64-bit Vista, although the 64-bit IE 8 has the same behavior.

That makes me think it’s some sort of IE 8/HTTPS/PDF/64-bit OS issue, but I’m not sure.

DebugBar for IE 8 shows the request and response went exactly as expected — no errors at all. IE 8 doesn’t show any errors or anything — pure white screen (or the page that was displayed before I tried to load the PDF). Cleared cache/cookies/etc.

Are there any known issues with IE/PDF/HTTPS?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Thought I’d come back and give the final answer.

    Thank you to everyone that suggested “Do not save encrypted pages to disk”.

    I followed EricLaw’s advice and set:

    Cache-Control: private

    I also found that I had Pragma: no-cache, which I removed.

    Works like a charm now 🙂

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