utorrent suddenly kills my network driver

[KaioShin]

Hello everyone, I hope someone can help me with this very strange problem that's driving me nuts now. The problem is propably rooted in my network driver, but it only manifests itself with utorrent, so maybe someone here has an idea on how to fix it or knows a work around.

First off, I've been using utorrent for years now, always without problems. I recently switched to Windows Vista and everything worked fine there too. Until today that is.

Earlier today my PC suddenly got a blue screen. The error message identified the wireless network driver as the cause.

After a reboot, my utorrent's torrent list was completely empty. That's very strange since I just added some new torrents shortly before it crashed. That's how I suspected utorrent is causing the crashes.

When I have utorrent closed, the PC works as normal and is rock stable. But when I open utorrent it causes a Blue Screen now after a few minutes. It will happen 100% after a short while when I start it. Only the amount of time seems random.

I already tried to get a new driver, but unfortunately there is none (Belkin USB W-LAN device). I tried reinstalling utorrent and switching to the latest beta, those didn't help either. I had it crash 10 times today by now, trying various ways to fix the problem. It's interesting to note that my torrent list was only lost in the very first crash. Maybe it was indeed utorrent that caused something in the system?

I already read the sticky topics, I have none of the firewall/antivir tools installed that can cause problems. The only firewall I have is the windows one.

What's really making me mad is that the system has been running fine for a month. I didn't install or change anything either (that I'm aware of). It just started to run havoc out of the blue.

Has anyone any suggestions?

System:

C2D E6600 2,4Ghz

3GB RAM

Geforece 9600GT

Vista SP1

[Ultima]

Not sure how to explain why it's suddenly happening, but just FYI, Belkin isn't known to make quality hardware. Additionally, USB networking devices (as well as their drivers) are known to be unstable and unreliable.

Can you provide the information requested in the first link in my signature? Do include the process lists as well. Thanks.

[jewelisheaven]

When the computer is shut down/loses power suddenly there's a chance you lose your resume.dat ... searching would tell you there's two possibilities, use the backup file, or have a shortcut to %APPDATA%\uTorrent handy when you boot up uT and notice the list is empty.

The resume file is remade every 30 seconds so you have that amount of time to backup the "good" file for a restore later.

If your wireless driver BSOD'd the computer, update it or don't use USB. Those type of drivers usually are sub-par to even WLAN cards.

[KaioShin]

Thanks for the reply. I'm afraid it's a hardware/driver problem, yeah. I'm already thinking about buying a new wireless adapter monday if nothing else helps. Any suggestions what's more reliable?

The information you asked for:

What I did so far...

-Reinstall utorrent / get the latest beta version

-Reinstall network driver. I also tried to install a XP driver since someone with the same network chipset but a different brand model said that fixed similar issues he had

-uninstall F-Secure antivir software (I'm still running Antivir atm)

-Reboot PC in Safemode (This seemed to have worked even... at least utorrent run stable for 30 minutes there until I rebooted my PC again - Vista in 16 colors is ugly...)

-I wanted to try another torrent software... but oh boy are they all ugly and bloated. Made me remember why I switched to utorrent. In the end I didn't try any yet.

-Limit download and upload speeds to a low value, didn't affect it at all unfortunately.

-Tried direct downloads, IMs, IRC and playing online... everything but utorrent works without causing crashes, at least atm.

Color of the network status light: Green

port checker: OK! Port 13810 is open and accepting connections.

Speed Guide settings:

-Upload Limit 55

-Upload Slots 5

-Connections per torrent 100

-connections global 450

-Max active torrents: 10

-max active downloads 4

net.max_halfopen: 8

OS: Windows Vista Sp1

security software: Avira Antivir (Windows defender?)

Router: Fritz!Box Fon WLAN 7050

ISP: Arcor DSL (Germany), DSL 6000 (6907/733 kbits)

Hijack.this logfile: http://nopaste.org/p/aCNGyszxE

jewelisheaven: Yeah I guess that the adapter isn't so great. It worked fine for two years now though. When I use an internal PCI Wireless adapter card my connection is pretty bad since my PC is standing in a spot with bad connectivity. The USB one has a bit of cable so I can move it to a much better position.

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. And I took 2 hours compiling this stuff (been playing at the side heh...), sorry if I missed posts that were new while I wrote this.

[Switeck]

Your settings are bad for your connection.

Speed Guide settings:

-Upload Limit 55

-Upload Slots 5

-Connections per torrent 100

-connections global 450

-Max active torrents: 10

-max active downloads 4

net.max_halfopen: 8

ISP: Arcor DSL (Germany), DSL 6000 (6907/733 kbits)

Max active torrents times upload slots per torrent is 50 total upload slots, assuming you have 10 torrents running at once with at least 5 peers each that want something you have. Since you're only uploading at 55 KiloBYTES/second total, that means average upload speed PER upload slot is barely 1 KiloBYTE/second...and in practice is often well below 0.5 KiloBYTE/second for many peers.

If you're only giving out 55 KiloBYTES/second max upload, then effectively you can only run about 18 upload slots total so each can average at least 3 KiloBYTES/second. (And that's still going to seem awful slow from the other side!) And since each torrent needs a few upload slots each, you can't effectively run 10 torrents at once. At most, I recommend 6 max active torrents...with 3 upload slots each. But you'd probably get better results with 4 max active torrents...with 4 upload slots each.

With 733 kilobits/second max upload speed on your connection, you might be able to raise your upload speed max in uTorrent some more and use more upload slots + active torrents at once. But that depends on whether that measured upload speed was the stable amount, a peak+burst amount, and whether you're sharing the connection with other people on other computers.

Your global and per-torrent connection max is WAY too high for the networking hardware you have.

With Belkin + USB connection, you probably need to set global connection max to only 60 and per-torrent connection max to something less than that.

[KaioShin]

Ok I lowered the connection settings to the values you suggested and it's running stable for 3 hours now... looks like it's good again

Thank you!