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New to the Torrent Community - ?s Inside


Jasung

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Hello everyone. First off, I like to thank everyone for giving me a moment of your time. Also, I apologize in advance if I'm broke any of the forum rules by posting this here. I assure you that if I did so then it was unintentional as I am doing my best to follow all the guidelines I've read.

I'm very new to the whole file-sharing, Torrent community. (If there's a lexicon to describe the community, then please let me know--as I said, I'm new.) I'm posting here in this section of the forums as it seemed the most appropriate (as I have not yet tried uTorrent).

Well, I've heard a few things about this type of file-sharing system and did a little digging on it and found it to be quite intriguing. The result being a couple of days ago I went headlong with the BitTorrent client. I can't say that I am too terribly impressed by it...

I think I want to try out uTorrent, but I am currently working on a project and cannot risk trying out new software at this point in time. However, I'd like to get my foot in the door (so to speak) in the meantime.

This is the first time I have visited the uTorrent forums and I've read a few of the threads around here. A few of the more interesting threads I've read were about the merger of BitTorrent and uTorrent, uTorrent's future developments, and this particular one: http://forum.utorrent.com/viewtopic.php?id=17457 along with Kuser's link. I'm not well versed with computers nor do I ever claim that I am computer savvy (so some of the language was lost to me), but I think I got the jist of things.

The thing is, after hearing a lot of praise (along with some criticisms) regarding uTorrent, I'd like to know more about it and how stable it is. You see, I have been running into quite a few problems of getting and staying online. I've discovered that the source of the problem was the BitTorrent software, or rather, it not cooperating well with my router (even though it is not listed as one of those having problems with BitTorrent in their FAQs). The only solution I've managed to find to alleviate this problem is to unplug the router itself and plug it back in--I believe that's called "power-cycling". We have a small network on this end... so this is not a very good solution, as you can imagine.

From looking over the uTorrent's FAQ, it also suffers some incompatibility with a few routers (again, we don't see ours here). I've actually read somewhere in the threads that a few of the members have also ran into this problem. I'm curious if this is commonplace (as the FAQ doesn't seem to say so--it's more of a "yes, it'll work" or "no, it won't"). So for those if you that ran into this problem (I just have a gut feeling that I'll run into this problem if I try to use uTorrent), how did you go about fixing it? Not power-cycling, I hope.

The other thing I'm really curious about are the speeds of uploads and downloads. With BitTorrent (when I'm online), the -BEST- I've ever got were roughly 10 KB/s Up and 30 KB/s Down. These numbers seem a bit low to me from everything I've read about Torrents. With the exception of -one- person I read doing speeds in megabytes, I haven't seen anyone showing their typical speeds. I'm sure I'm not looking in the right places about it. But are these speeds the norm? I don't -think- they are but I just have to ask. I use ZoneAlarm which appeared only once in an answer at BitTorrent's FAQ and turned the firewall setting for it way down, but I haven't even come close of getting back to those speeds I did before. Anyone else use ZoneAlarm?

I think that's enough for now. I know this post ended up being rather long and was probably a task for you read it to this point. So, thanks. Thanks for putting up with its length and for any help you can give to a new member of the community.

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Wow, I certainly had bad speeds.

@ Ultima - Thanks, I'll do that (immediately after this post--promise). Hopefully, that link will give me a better understanding on the matter and help with my connections to the net and the router problem.

In the meantime, let me ask the following...

As I understand it, BitTorrent and uTorrent are quite similar. So hopefully you fine folks can help me out with this next problem of mine--system crashes. Since I've been encountering the connection problems, I decided yesterday to go ahead and uninstall BitTorrent until I find a fix for it. Quite frankly, I don't know if BitTorrent has a hand in the system crashes, but I have a strong suspicion that it does.

Ever since I've uninstalled BitTorrent and its associated files, I've been running into system crashes. Fortunately, I haven't lost any of the more important files (i.e., work and financial-related documents). The only new software or files that got on the computer since January 15th, the day or the day before I've ran into the dropped connection problems and system crashes, were the regular internet files that everybody gets from normal browsing, an update to ZoneAlarm (in fact, I dropped this in favor of a clean install of ZoneAlarm version 7+), new definitions of Windows Defender, and my normal work documents.

Right now, I'm encountering the system crashes, which reboots the computer and then gives me a message that states something like "Windows encountered a major system error", about every other time that I fire up the computer. I did run the Norton Antivirus scan (albeit, my virus definitions are a touch old), and both the quick and full scans with Windows Defender. They all turned up empty. I don't know what is causing the crashes.

I'm not doing anything different than what I was doing before January 15th. Honestly, I haven't run into any crashes or other major problems in probably two years or thereabouts (my memory tends to fail any further than that with things like this). Don't get me wrong, I've run into the occasional glitch, but those types of things are usually resolved very quickly--usually by updating whatever software that's causing it.

I update the computer's software, drivers, and the operating system on a regular basis. I scan for viruses quite often. I also delete files that are no longer necessary or that aren't used regularly (usually text documents, spreadsheets, internet cookies, and the like).

Anyone have any ideas on the matter? I appreciate any help anyone can offer.

Oh right, here's some information on this computer (if you need more let me know--remember I'm not very comfortable with computers yet).

-I'm running Windows XP version 2002 Service Pack 2.

-It's a Hewlett-Packard.

-There's an Intel Pentium 4 CPU in there.

-I have lots of memory and storage space just floating around in there.

Again, thanks-in-advance for any insight on the matter.

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Please excuse the double-post. I know I'm breaking one of the forum rules, but this is on a slightly different topic (and the edit button seems to delete my previous post, which I don't want to do). So, sorry about the post and if one of the moderators wishes to include this post into the bottom of the other one, then that would be fine by me.

I looked over Ultima's link and the a couple of the other links in there and I think I may have been confusing the terms "modem" and "router". So I may not even have a router problem. Which term is the one where the internet cable comes out of your tower and plugs into the box that's connected to the various lines of the home? I think that's the router (which is the way I was using the term before) and the modem is inside the computer's tower, right? (Ahh, where are the smart teenagers when you need them, heh.) Either way, it's that white little box I was unplugging and plugging back in.

It looks like ISPs can also play a part in connection problems. I didn't get any hits when I searched for it using "Comcast" in the search field so hopefully if I try uTorrent that won't be an issue. But I did notice a post by winMX_67 who said "I know that people say that Comcast reports your IP address to the P2P police." Why is that? I thought file-sharing using torrents isn't illegal barring copyrighted material. It does bother me a little if the police is also looking at my documents that I would upload using torrents and materials that I would download--talk about a lack of privacy. Perhaps, I'm just reading into it too much.

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I found utorrent after paying an online company $49.50 US for a supposwed service. I am EXREMELY new to all of this, 51 years old & all I wanted to do was get a few movies downloaded to my laptop for my daughters to watch on an upcoming flight. I singed onto uTorrent and a window pops up saying " welcome to this free service, if you paid for it, get a refund" I am ticked and have been taken by " freemovienow.com " How can I get a refund. I have contested the charge w/ AMEX but is there any other advise you can offer?

Regards, Peter

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rigmat, it won't help to argue with us...as the scammers are stealing from you and µTorrent's makers (by falsely presenting µTorrent as 'their' product). Good luck finding the scammer's shell companies and getting money back out of them...they're probably scamming the credit card companies too!

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I'm still having problems with the system crashing, but it IS happening a little less now. I honestly don't know why. Anyone have any ideas on what I should look at or check to help me to avoid the crashes?

I am sorry to hear what had happened to you, Rigmat. I have seen torrent clients for sale before too during this past month; fortunately, I found that it was free beforehand. Were you able to stop payment on it, Rigmat?

Now that I think about it, is there a list somewhere like a blacklist that shows these fraudulent sites?

Well, I haven't been online in a while nor have I tried any of the torrent clients since the uninstall, but I may give my shot at it again soon.

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