Why is there no installer for version 1.8.5?

[Zinedin]

Hey guys!

I made a clean install of Windows Vista 64-bit on 2010-01-01, 15:58:57 CET. I do clean installs of Windows few times a year, I think I did it four times last year. Well, I then began to install all my software applications. When I needed to install uTorrent I decided to download the latest version, version 1.8.5 and install it. Prior to that I had like version 1.8.4 or 1.8.3, I just remember that it was a quite recent version.

Now, 15 days later I want to launch uTorrent manually but I can't find a single shortcut for it on the Start menu nor on the Desktop or the Quick Launch menu. By manually I in this case mean launching uTorrent client only, otherwise uTorrent is launched on my computer only when I click on a Torrent file or link to download it's contents, and uTorrent is not set to autostart on system start and never has been.

I checked the install directory in C:\Program Files (x86) and there is no folder named uTorrent there as it is supposed to be and always has been when it's installed. Still, I know that uTorrent is on my system, somewhere or somehow because I can launch it by clicking on a Torrent file.

What's going on here?

Where is my install directory for uTorrent?

Do I have one?... how do you tell?... can uTorrent client tell me it's install directory?

Could it be that I accidentally chose to use uTorrent without installing it, i.e. as a mobile software application for UFD devices? If so, how do I correct that now and make a permanent installation?

Could it be that the version 1.8.5 simply is designed to run without prior installation, that it does not include an installer? I have already tried to download the utorrent.exe binary from utorrent.com and ran it but no option is displayed where one could chose to install it or run it as is.

Well, I'm very confused right now, I can tell you that.

Thanks in advance!

[Switeck]

Did you read the Documentation or FAQ?

[Zinedin]

Can you be more specific? What is it that I should be looking for in the FAQ or the Documentation?

I have read the first 69 questions under the general, features and installation section of the FAQ. They did not cover my problem. The only FAQ that to some degree relates to the problem that I have is the question number one under the installation section. It goes like this.

Q: Does µTorrent install itself?

A: No, it is a stand-alone application, unless you use the installer version. However, on first run, it will ask if you would like to make shortcuts on your start menu and desktop.

This sentence sounds familiar to me, I must have read it at some point during my three years of using uTorrent, I probably read the FAQ in the beginning. Well, anyway, this is something that I am aware of. Running the utorrent.exe usually brings up a dialog box where you chose your preferred language and then you got to chose if you want to install it or run it as a stand-alone application. This dialog is never seen when I download and run the utorrent.exe file. What happens instead is that the uTorrent client launches or shows up if already launched and minimized. However, if I run the uTorrent 1.6.exe or the uTorrent 1.8.1.exe that I have on my disk I instantly get to this dialog.

Is there really such a thing such as the "installer version" of uTorrent? I mean are uTorrent packages really divided into the two categories such as installer version and a stand-alone version as the FAQ implies in the first sentence? I don't think I have ever come across one. Like the FAQ describes in the second sentence, what these utorrent.exe files actually do is they allow you to simply add shortcuts, extract the exe to the install directory, and make some entries in the Windows registry so that it would appear as installed for easy un-install operation. But it's basically just a stand-alone application, it's not a software that requires much system integration like bigger software suits such as the Microsoft Office, Symantec Nortn, etc. which need to install and add all sort of things on your system to make it work.

Update:

Could this have something to do with the fact that I have backed up and restored my %AppData%\Roaming\uTorrent directory with all it's contents prior to installing the new version 1.8.5? Although, I have been backing up and restoring the uTorrent roaming directory for years without any issues, but I don't know if this could be the reason why this version of uTorrent in particular doesn't work properly now, or at least it's not set up the way I want it.

It's not a problem for me to create a bunch of shortcuts manually on the Desktop, Quick Launch, Start menu, etc. but what do I target these shortcuts on? I don't know where the application itself is residing, and it's not in the %ProgramFiles(x86)% nor the %ProgramFiles% or %ProgramW6432%.

It's not shown in the list of installed software on Vista.

[Switeck]

uTorrent will not show the install menu if it thinks it's already installed...thus it won't create shortcut links.

[Zinedin]

Alright, that would seem reasonable. But how do I correct this now? How do I make uTorrent stop thinking it's already installed and present me with the install dialog?

[Switeck]

Blow away its application folder.

...Bleh, do what moogly said.

[moogly]

Do you have the folder %appdata%\utorrent? (Windows+R > run > %appdata%\utorrent)

If yes, save a copy of this folder (µT closed of course) and delete it completely.

Then execute utorrent.exe again, the install pop up should appear.

[Zinedin]

1. I have deleted the original uTorrent roaming folder from %AppData%.

2. I have installed the uTorrent 1.8.5 sucessfully, the shortcuts were created and everything.

3. I now have a copy of the old uTorrent roaming folder on the Desktop.

I now want to replace the contents of the current uTorrent folder with my backup copy. The current one has the following files in it.

dht.dat

resume.dat

resume.dat.old

rss.dat

settings.dat

settings.dat.old

My own folder however which I backed up previously has many more files in it. It has the following files.

dht.dat

dht.dat.old

resume.dat

resume.dat.old

rss.dat

rss.dat.old

settings.dat

settings.dat.old

Toolbar.bmp

utorrent.chm

utorrent.lng

utorrent-help.zip

As you can see my own folder has an OLD version of every single DAT file. I don't know if that's a good idea or not. It also includes a CHM help file and an LNG language file. What files do I really need and which files need to be replaced/overwritten with my own backup copy?

Correct me if I am wrong but I think the resume.dat is for restoring the list of torrents, rss.dat is for restoring the list of RSS feeds in later uTorrent versions which support it, and the settings.dat is simply for restoring settings. But what is that dht.dat file used for?

Can you tell me if I need the utorrent.chm file? Will there be no help option available if I don't have it or what?

That LNG file probably belongs to some old version of uTorrent and not the most current one so I'm figuring it would be best to delete it and download a new version compatible with uTorrent version 1.8.5. But for what I can tell from different posts on the forum, all the latest versions of uTorrent include the translation (language) file and the help file by default now. So is it safe to delete them both?

Is it safe to delete the OLD files? They just seem to make a clutter. They are not used anyway by the uTorrent. So why are they good anyway?

Sorry if it seems like I am asking 100 questions, I just want to understand what I am doing because I have so many torrents that I have been seeding for years and I have many new ones that I am downloading and I don't want to mess things up here because I can't stand adding them all one after one manually and checking integrity for each of them.

[moogly]

Important files are resume.dat, settings.dat and rss.dat (if you use RSS in µT).

dht.dat is about cached DHT.

utorrent.chm (and its zipped file utorrent-help.zip) is the µT manual, you can press F1 to open it.

utorrent.lng, lang pack downloadable here http://www.utorrent.com/downloads

But you can close uT, erase all new files created during the install in %appadata%\utorrent then copy back the old files. And reopen uT. It will resume your torrent jobs.

[Zinedin]

I just un-installed uTorrent again and re-installed it to see what files it is creating in the %AppData%.

The first file to be created is the settings.dat. However, if a language other than English is chosen during install then the utorrent.lng file would be downloaded automatically and would be the first file, and the settings.dat would be the second.

On the finish line of the install process the uTorrent is run for the first time and the Speed Guide dialog is shown. After closing the Speed Guide dialog the settings.dat is renamed with an OLD extension and a third file takes it's place with the same name of "settings.dat".

When uTorrent is terminated after it's first run, three new files are created: dht.dat, resume.dat and rss.dat.

It turns out that when the F1 key is pressed for the first time with uTorrent running and in focus, the utorrent-help.zip file is created and the utorrent.chm file is extracted from it automatically, and the Help file shows up for the first time. In other words the Help file does not need to be downloaded and configured manually and don't need to be backed up.

I have come to the same conclusion as you Moogly, the only important files are really just the resume.dat and settings.dat, maybe rss.dat too but I don't use RSS in uTorrent.

I think that backing up these files could be and should be made more easy for novice users. What I think that uTorrent should have had years ago is an "export" option under the File menu which would open an export guide for everyones convenience, not just the novice users. It's something I have always been missing in uTorrent. The backup copy of my uTorrent roaming folder is about three years old, and I have always been re-using and making new incremental copies of it when restoring uTorrent data. Sure it works but it's not the most convenient way to backup application data. I can only hope that it will be included in the upcoming version 2.0 or later versions of uTorrent. Even without it, uTorrent is still by far my favorite Torrent client.

Well, my torrents and settings are completely restored now. I have roughly 1500 torrents, so I'm glad that I don't need to add them manually in the list and check them for integrity. Integrity check sometimes seem to fail and determines a torrent as incomplete even thou it already had been downloaded to 100% so it kind of tends to mess things up, and that's no fun when no one else is still seeding it so you can't download again those pieces that uT determines as incomplete. That needs to be fixed if it's not already.

Thanks for your support guys!