Yes, we never know what the next beta build will bring, but hey, that's why we try them and when necessary report, so that any issues can be resolved for the next build. Back to my problem, I tried your simple suggestion, but sigh, M$ as always makes easy things hard and insisted that "settings.dat" must and can only be named "settings.dat.txt". Sigh. I suppose I could have gone down to DOS and _maybe_ eventually fixed that on the command line. Instead, already having copied everything to backup dirs, shut down the troublesome uTorrent beta and moved that entire directory aside, I then (WITHOUT de-installing the uTorrent beta), simply downloaded and installed the most recent _stable_ production build to the default location. Client problem immediately solved and doing it this way I didn't lose anything. Bits are moving up and down just like before and all my seeding torrents are just fine, so life is good on this point; will revisit when the next beta build comes along. Hope my experience and report helps anyone with the same symptoms.