BSOD in V 1.6

[Amaturus]

Whenever I have the program's window open for more than approx. three hours, it will crash my system. The 'mode' I am in doesn't matter (meaning whether I had activated the 'General' tab or the 'Peers' or 'Pieces' or whatever tab). It shuts down the system, giving a blue screen-of-death stating that there was a fatal exception 0E on a particular address in VXD VSDATA95(01). No way to recover: I have to restart the system. As Murphy would have it, this *always* happens when some very fast seed just came online. Nothing is more frustrating than having a d/l @ 35 KBps interrupted and having it replaced, after the restart, with a new connection to the same seed, only this time it's a 4 KBps connection...

Anyone have any idea what could be wrong here?

I have a (very stable) Windoze 98SE system, flawlessly handling 1500KBps downloads (through News Rover, a news reader). This software is the very first that's crashed my system in over a year. That makes me curious.

FYI: I have been using this system to browse Usenet & download lots of stuff, to browse Internet, to edit video and audio etc. In short: it works and it stable. My last Blue Screen Of Death dates from over a year ago.

Oh - just so you know: this does *not* happen when I have the program minimised. Which makes me think of some video driver thingy that is going berserk...

[Ultima]

Heh ZoneAlarm... do you have ZA installed, or did you uninstall it? Also, you should limit the global maximum number of connections to LESS than 100 on Windows 98.

[Amaturus]

Yes, I have ZA installed: V2.1.44. Ancient, I know, but it's been keeping my system clean ever since so I do not feel the need to update/upgrade. Never had any trouble with it whatsoever. My motto is: if it ain't broke... (then the kids ain't found it yet ^__^)

I have the global max number of connections set to 20: this way, W98 will allow me to do other stuff while µT is downloading. And besides, I seem to have a knack for picking torrents that don't have more than 10 or 15 peers/seeds anyhow. Doesn't trouble me.

So, what do you suggest w.r.t. these crashes? That I uninstall ZA and <shudder> leave my machine open to the world?

[Ultima]

Unfortunately, at this point, the only reason I can think of is ZoneAlarm. Are you willing to try and replace it with Jetico Personal Firewall?

[Amaturus]

Wellll... Considering this software I am running (windoze - you know: this bug-ridden heap of bytes jokingly being sold as an operating system and its extremely fickle attitude toward whichever changes, and considering that µTorrent is the first bit of software to *ever* have caused me any problem with ZA in about 6 years of very intensive system usage, I'm inclined to point the finger at µT, not at ZA. Which I do not expect you to do, of course. I am grateful for your time. Thank you for replying. On to new horizons we go. Too bad, tho: µT is a very nice piece of software. Tip of the hat to its maker.

[Ultima]

Best of luck then =T

[Firon]

Suit yourself. Hope you enjoy your firewall that doesn't actually do anything.

[Amaturus]

Hehehe. This sounded so 12 y/o "My wee-wee is bigger than yours" :-)

Anyway - I've been using µTorrent alongside another client for a while and a question came to me: is it possible, in µT, to check whether a peer/seed is actually online or not, or does a peer/seed that comes online automatically get connected to other peers negotiating the same file(s)? Is it possible, if so, to 'force' a connection to this party? If, say, I had a file downloaded for 99.3% and all peers present were 'lower' than me and there were 2 or 3 seeds present in the swarm, but not connected to me - does µT have a way to 'nudge' them to connect and feed me?

[Ultima]

Nope, there is no such thing as forced connections in BitTorrent.

[µtorrent-Guest]

no amaturus, you can't nudge them!

you know they are running this very good ZA thingy, and if you could "force a connection to this party" then this would mean that the ZA thingy is useless don't you think?! :-P

[Amaturus]

I'm probably stoopid, but I didn't see how your software offered me a way to reply to the last-but-one post, so here goes (in reply to the reply by Ultima):

I had several questions, but you replied to the last one only, so here goes:

1) Is it possible, in µT, to check whether a peer/seed is actually online or not, or

2) does a peer/seed that comes online automatically get connected to other peers negotiating the same file(s)?

3) Is it possible, to 'force' a connection to this party? If, say, I had a file downloaded for 99.3% and all peers present were 'lower' than me and there were 2 or 3 seeds present in the swarm, but not connected to me - does µT have a way to 'nudge' them to connect and feed me?

You replied to 3) - sadly, this is not possible, you say, so if an ill-willed tracker blocks seeds, I'm done for

[DreadWingKnight]

1> Not without attempting to connect to them, and that only succeeds in checking to see if they are reachable or not. If they aren't reachable and you are, you will have to wait.

2> Typically, yes

3> No.

ZoneAlarm has a very long history of interfering with p2p applications.

In the case of being behind a router as well as having a software firewall, it's like trying to stop someone from torching your roof (software firewall) when their objective is your furnace in the basement (router). If they get past the router, it's already too late for the software firewall.

Additionally, because of its extremely widespread use, ZoneAlarm is one of THE MOST targeted firewalls for malware designers.

[Amaturus]

OMG - an actual informative reply! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!

I am still very curious about the interference of ZA with whatever. I've been using it for six years on end, been installing and uninstalling several p2p clients and never, ever had any problem, until I tried uTorrent. As I said before, I'm inclined to point the finger at uT instead of ZA, since it's the only variable that has changed in a previously working environment. Heck, my system even survived the latest MicroSh*t 'security' <g> updates, which means it's *really* foolproof :-) But hey - I have other software for when it really matters, so no problem. I was just curious if I was the only one who had a similar problem.