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µtorrent damages its own torrent files?


Kluelos

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I'm using v 1.6, and I've had this problem several times recently.

I do a soft reboot of the system, it returns and µtorrent autostarts, then attempts to resume its running tasks. It will then tell me that it cannot open such-and-such a .torrent file because it's invalid. Understand, it was just fine before the reboot.

I look in my automatic load directory, find the copy now renamed .loaded, change the name back, and try to load that. It tells me again, "invalid torrent file". I try loading that file into another bittorrent client, same result. Torrentspy can't open it anymore either. THe file is apparently damaged beyond usability, and it requires that I remove the task, re-find and re-download the torrent file, load it again,and do a hash check, to get back to where I was.

Once would be a system glitch. It's happened four or five times now. What can I do, short of shutting µtorrent down by hand before rebooting? (If I have to do that, I'll go back to 1.5 instead.) What's causing this, and why is µtorrent trashing the torrent file? Help, advice, tips very much appreciated, and I'd love to find some sort of tool that will analyze a torrent file's structure to figure out what changed. Anybody know of such a thing?

My system is Win2k with AVG and a firmware firewall. I typically have several torrents working, the number depending on the up and down speeds I'm getting. This will happen to only one of those active torrents, not to the rest which resume just as they should.

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There is an XP tweak option to force programs to terminate immediately upon shutdown called Autoend Hung Programs, perhaps you have that set and µTorrent does not have enough time to close all open files when you reboot. But I don't understand why you object to stopping µTorrent before rebooting. I always pause all torrents then exit µTorrent if I have to reboot, not very difficult. That allows my torrents to resume automatically when I restart µTorrent.

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It's not available in 2k, but shouldn't be necessary -- µtorrent doesn't hang, and does shut down. I could understand this more if it hung or crashed.

I don't know that manually stopping it before shutdown will fix the error, but if so, I would worry about a program that didn't shut down cleanly when bid to do so by Windows. I also object on principle to programs that need special treatment, requiring you to remember how to baby them when you've got your mind on something else, like the problem requiring the reboot.

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There are no torrent files or any subfolders in that directory. It's got resume.dat, rss.dat, dht.dat and the equivalent .old files, but no torrents, no folders. Just to be certain, I searched for folders named "utorrent" on %WinDrive%. There's only the one in %AppData% and the one I created in Program Files to stash the exe for consistency's sake. No torrent files or subdirs in either. I then did a search for a currently active torrent file on all hard drives, and found only the one in the download directory, and the .loaded file in the autodownload directory.

Which is more or less off the point, that being the apparent corruption of the files regardless of location.

When µtorrent auto-opens a torrent, it appears that a copy is made to the default download directory (and not to %AppData% which I was expecting too), then the existing file in the auto directory is re-extensioned . That file, the .loaded file, is closed. I verified this by doing a rename on a .loaded file for a currently active torrent. If the file were still open, the rename would be refused. It wasn't.

So if the .loaded file isn't open, by µtorrent or anything else, how does it ALSO get damaged or corrupted during the shutdown process? Mysteriouser and mysteriouser.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Reverted to v 1.5, but it's of minimal help. IT seems that every time µtorrent is stopped, however it's done, without first pausing all active torrents and letting them wind down, at least one torrent file will be damaged. Apparently even renamed copies suffer from this, which is really strange, but µtorrent won't open that file, and I must I re-download it.

If I can't solve this I'll need to switch clients. Anyone have any ideas?

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  • 3 weeks later...

There is something specific in your setup causing the corruption of torrents, as we have people with torrent lists totalling hundreds without problems.

BitComet is NOT a recommended client, as it causes MAJOR disruptions in piece distribution.

Kluelos, are you using the same folder for "Store .torrent files in" and "Move .torrents for finished jobs to"?

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DreadWingKnight, no, I've been using different folders for everything. Indeed, I have yet another separate folder for torrents I download but don't want to start yet, and it's corrupting even those if I copy one of them into the torrent storage or autostart folders and start it. I'm not really that interested in what others are doing, only in what's happening to me. A system problem? Sure, I'll buy that, but absent a suggested fix, and given the way this topic's been ignored, it doesn't matter.

All of the stories about Bitcomet "cheating" or "lying" or "unfairly distributing" or doing this or that bad thing are utterly without proof, and on investigation turn out to be rumor, misunderstanding bittorrent (LOTS of that!) or pilot error. The only ones with any substance at all involve a difference of opinion on implementing undocumented features. (Yes, including the DHT/private file mess, which STILL isn't documented.) It does have its share of bugs, and do stay away from v 0.71 and 0.72, stick with 0.70 for now.

Besides,µtorrent is full of spyware since Ludde sold out, hadn't you heard?

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lol @ Kluelos, if you really think µTorrent comes with spyware, then why do you bother trying to use it? Or are you just saying that out of spite because you never figured out your problem? Whats "Win2K/4" by the way? Are you using any other security software? Checked that you don't have anything listed in the incompatible software list?

@toddintr: Don't bother buying into the FUD, it's entirely false. If he really wants to substantiate that claim, he's going to have to provide hard evidence. Which he can't.

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I've posted more than once about BitComet's problems, especially with its (lack of) compatibility with other BitTorrent clients. Whether intentional or otherwise, older versions DON'T play fair. The "jury is still out" on the newer versions. Do a search on my nickname + BitComet and you'll see them.

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These are the sorts of unsubstantiated rumours flying around regarding µtorrent. They fit nicely, don't you think, with the unsubstantiated rumours about BitComet? And they're generally equally true. Except, of course, that their unsubstantiated rumors are FUD, while our unsubstantiated rumors are Gospel.

Ultima, Win2k/4 is Windows 2000, Service Pack 4. There is nothing in the list of incompatibles that accounts for this behaviour.

Haven't seen BitComet "not playing fair" myself, or even heard a good definition of the term. HAVE seen µtorrent destroy its own torrents, and can't seem to get any useful assistance with that problem. I'm sure that BitComet is evil, nasty and unfair, doesn't bathe very often, and doesn't even love its mother, but µtorrent trashes its own torrents and I'm sorta focussed on that last bit right now.

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Anything listed in the incompatible software section, regardless of whether the problem listed is related to the problem, should be mentioned. Not every single problem caused by specific applications is listed there, but if an application is listed there at all, it's not unlikely that it'd cause other problems. Are you able to use µTorrent on another computer to test this? If so, please try.

As for the BitComet "rumors" being unsubstantiated... are you telling us that BitComet doesn't have broken upload slot management? Or do you think it's okay to allow 50 upload slots when your upload limit is at 10KiB/s? Is that evidence not hard enough? There aren't many people who can dispute DWK's points regarding protocol issues in BitTorrent clients, simply because he's extremely familiar with the protocol (resident expert, so to speak), so when he recounts his experiences with BitComet, he's not making random stories up, and he's not just going by rumors.

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I've long since reviewed the list of problem apps, long before I posted the original question. No, I'm not running any of them. Do notice that this section of the FAQ is listed in terms of specific problems -- none of which fit. That pretty much takes care of the "or something like it" issue.

Testing on another machine isn't germane. We already know the issue doesn't arise on most others or this would be one of those FAQ's. Which helps this situation not at all.

Here's a useful troubleshooting tip for you, very useful: suppose you *wanted* to create the situation you see. How would you go about it? That question will direct you to areas that could reasonably cause the defect you're seeing, and keep you from wasting a lot of time in areas that probably aren't relevant.

As for BitComet, let's look again: we have no evidence at all before us that it does what is claimed, or that it still does so in the current version; nothing at all in the Bittorrent specs mandating that upload slot management be done in some particular way (which would bring us back to matters of opinion); no evidence that this is in all cases bad; no evidence that any other client does it differently or that that is or would be better according to some unspecified standard. So to answer your question, "NO", the evidence is very far from hard enough for me.

But I didn't come here to defend some other client, and especially not in a forum as partisan as this. As you may notice, I am not the one who raised the issue in the first place.

I came for assistance with µtorrent's file management problem. I'm not particularly interested in trying to persuade anyone of anything. I can tell you that other clients don't mangle their own torrents when they are shut down, on this machine, and that µtorrent does. That nothing in the FAQ, and nothing else in the forum throws any light on this.

Still, I'd think that it's really, extremely, even blatantly obvious that my intention and desire is to use µtorrent, except that with the flaws I'm encountering, I can't. If there is some germane and useful advice, that would be most appreciated. (Is it completely unreasonable of me to suspect that there is none to be had?)

For those who wish to disparage other Bittorrent clients on whatever basis, I suggest another thread be created for that purpose, as it's irrelevant and distracting to this one.

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BitComet downloading from peers and only uploading back at 0.01KiB/s counts as leeching, no matter how you want to look at it. The only reason I actually took up the issue was because you got toddintr confused where there was nothing to be confused about in the first place. You're right, and I agree, it's irrelevant to your issue, so I'll stop talking about it now.

You may think looking for *possibly* incompatible software is irrelevant, but we don't. If it were me, and I only experienced a problem on my end (and my end only), and it didn't happen on any other computer I tried, I wouldn't blame µTorrent so much as I would my computer instead. If anything, I'd actually post a HijackThis! log or something similar for others to analyze.

Additionally, if I knew exactly what questions to ask, or how I'd go about reproducing your problem, I wouldn't bother making it look like I'm wasting your time, nor would I bother wasting my time. I think after over a year of helping people troubleshoot µTorrent, I'd have at least that bit (about imagining how I'd reproduce the problem) down already. And wait, I would always look for incompatible software first anyhow, so is it really a surprise that I'm asking you to do the same? So much for that useful tip -- thanks anyway!

But hey, seeing as how my attempts at helping are being judged as useless, irrelevant, and a waste of time, it looks like I'm unwanted here, so whatever, good luck with solving your problem (really -- I wouldn't want to see µTorrent lose a user for such a peculiar issue).

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Bye now. Thanks for trying.

Now me, if I had any insight into the program, I'd ask to see one of the damaged torrent files in order to see what happened to it. But nobody did. HT log? Yep, I could do that. Even a DXDiag report, if that'd help.

Myself, I don't think those logs would help, at least not without a plausible theory of what went wrong in the first place. One could speculate that, oh, maybe it's your antivirus program, but the difficulty there is that the program would need to open the file in order to trash it, and no process except µtorrent has the file open. (This is where we get into "how would I create that effect if I wanted to". There's no plausible mechanism there, absent just creating unobserved behaviour out of whole cloth.)

Were I running something strange or unusual, this might be more productive, but I have nothing that hundreds of others, if not thousands, don't run too, nothing on the list of suspected incompatibles. Somebody, somewhere, would have almost certainly run into this issue before, and there'd be a puzzled question on the forum about it.

So I'd want very much to see the torrent files that were trashed, in order to figure out just what happened to them if I could.

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