Can't download board driver for MKRZero

I'm well used to the Arduino IDE with Uno, Nano and ATTiny. I've just bought an MKRZero, but cannot download the board package into Arduino 1.8.9.

I've tried to do this with two different copies of the IDE, both portable, on Windows 10 O/S.
One (on my network drive) starts to download, then tells me:
"Error downloading http://downloads.arduino.cc/tools/arduinoOTA-1.2.0-windows_386.zip"

The other (on a pen drive) also gets half-way, then tells me:
"CRC doesn't match. It may be a temporary problem, please try again later."

Needless to say, I have tried again later, but not sure how much later, or how much faith to put in this being magically corrected.

Please can anyone help?

To update this:

  • I have removed the existing pen-drive copy of Arduino IDE 1.8.9 and re-installed it (as a portable installation). I still cannot install the Arduino SAMD boards package v1.6.21.
  • I have also tried installing the SAMD boards v1.6.20, but still get the same error (about CRC not matching). Strangely, an attempt to download v1.6.19 resulted in the other error (about error downloading arduinoOTA-1.2.0-windows_386.zip)

Very stuck. Please help!

Please do this:

  • Click the link at the line following File > Preferences > More preferences can be edited directly in the file.
  • Delete the "staging" subfolder of the folder that opened when you clicked that link.
  • Try installing Arduino SAMD Boards again.

The Arduino IDE stores the downloaded files for Boards Manager installations in the staging folder. If it already has a file of the same name in that folder, it will use that file, rather than downloading a fresh copy. That makes installations faster by avoiding unnecessary downloads but if something goes wrong during the download and the file gets corrupted, the Arduino IDE isn't smart enough to delete the corrupted file and download a fresh copy. So it will always try to use that bad file, but then it checks the validity of the file by comparing the CRC against the one defined in the boards index file and the installation fails. By deleting the staging folder, you force the Arduino IDE to download a fresh copy of the file. Hopefully this time the download will go well and you'll get a good copy of the file.

I saw a similar CRC error while trying to install SAMD support. Cleaning the staging folder didn't help. The Arduino Boards Manager attempted to download "http://downloads.arduino.cc/tools/arduinoOTA-1.2.0-windows_386.zip" but our company firewall modified the ZIP file to say "Gateway Anti-Virus Alert. This request is blocked by the Firewall Gateway Anti-Virus Service. Name: Downloader.A_1901 (Trojan) blocked."

pert:
Please do this:

  • Click the link at the line following File > Preferences > More preferences can be edited directly in the file.
  • Delete the "staging" subfolder of the folder that opened when you clicked that link.
  • Try installing Arduino SAMD Boards again.

Many thanks, this worked for me.

You're welcome snusmumriken. I'm glad if I was able to be of assistance. Enjoy!
Per

mincode:
I saw a similar CRC error while trying to install SAMD support. Cleaning the staging folder didn't help. The Arduino Boards Manager attempted to download "http://downloads.arduino.cc/tools/arduinoOTA-1.2.0-windows_386.zip" but our company firewall modified the ZIP file to say "Gateway Anti-Virus Alert. This request is blocked by the Firewall Gateway Anti-Virus Service. Name: Downloader.A_1901 (Trojan) blocked."

Thanks for taking the time to share your findings mincode! That's a very tricky problem. I would usually expect the firewall to simply block the download, which would result in a different error.

How exactly did it modify the ZIP file? I don't understand what you mean by "to say "Gateway Anti-Virus Alert".

I don't know how the firewall works, but however I download the ZIP file (using Boards Manager or my web browser or wget), the firewall intercepts the ZIP and replaces its contents with HTML that warns about a virus/trojan.

I found a way to download the ZIP file! I paste the ZIP's URL into my web browser or wget, and replace http with https. The firewall can't inspect an encrypted https transfer, so the ZIP downloads fine. I moved it into my Arduino staging folder and reran Boards Manager. Success.

I used Virus Total and Jotti to scan the ZIP, and it's clean. Our firewall's virus scanner is giving false positives.

Thanks for the information! I didn't expect you to have a knowledge of the inner workings of the firewall. I just wanted to get an idea of how to identify a downloaded file that had been modified by a firewall so that I might use this information to help others with the same type of problem in the future.

I'm very glad to hear that you found a solution. Thanks for taking the time to provide an update and share your solution for the benefit of others.