Downloading VS 2008 from Dreamspark over multiple sessions

I quote from an article by the University of Texas: "Microsoft DreamSpark - Purchasing", which says towards the end:

Click the Download button marked Download Manager.

On campus — Periodically use the Pause button to suspend your download to ensure that you do not use your entire bandwidth quota. When paused, you can use the Exit button to quit the Download Manager. The Download Manager will place a link on your desktop that you can use to resume your download.

I'm not a user of DreamSpark, so I don't know which Download Manager is referred here. But I suggest that you access the site via internet explorer, to let Microsoft use its own download manager, and try out if the Pause/Exit mechanism that is suggested here does work for you. If it does, use it periodically.

Edit: Found this:

If you RESUME the download using the icon on your desktop, it's likely to FAIL and DESTROY the part of the file you've already got... But if you go back to DreamSpark and download the SAME FILE AGAIN rather than using the desktop link it appears to resume OK.

Torrents may not work (legality aside), Can't really say for sure, but every copy of VS I have ever had has been pre PID'ed in the setup file.

If you email Microsoft, for a nominal fee, they may be able to give you a media pack.

If not, get a friend with a fast connection to help you.

I am sorry, but I have not seen anyone with problems resuming using either the Microsoft Download Manager or Microsoft downloads through Firefox. If you are having this problem, it could mean other problems. It is worth a try using a download manager such as Free Download Manager, but if this does nothing, you could be out of luck.

Had the exact same problem 1 yr ago. It almost seemed like Microsoft's servers don't support resume at all and it kept timing out on me. Only way I could get around it was finding the fastest possible wired internet connection (my school, of course) and d/l there. Heh, since I couldn't transfer the ISO from school computers (no DVD burner, too big for my flash drive, no shared dir) I had to unplug a machine in the lab, spoof the MAC address and assign the matching static IP on my laptop to fool the router.

Are you remote from your campus or something?