System Crashing

[bjdeeler]

I am a computer dummy, but I may have some info that might help some folks out there who are having problems with their computer crashing for no obvious reason while they are using the uTorrent program. Mine was, 4 or 5 times a day, sometimes more. I am running Microsoft Windows 7-Home Premium with Avast (Free) Antivirus. I was using PC Tools Firewall (free) and earlier, Zone Alarm Firewall (free). I found your Forum and read the info on Trouble-Shooting for systems crashing. The article's author felt very strongly that "Malware" was usually the problem. I cannot dispute that, but I believe my system is strongly malware free. So, I looked elsewhere. To cut to the chase, I deleted my PC Tools Firewall program and started using the built-in Microsoft Windows Defender Firewall. Voila, I have been about two days now running uTorrent full-time, with one to four torrents running constantly. I have not had one crash. So, maybe you might check your firewall (or uninstall it) to see if it might help your crash problems. I hope someone can benefit from this small tip. Good luck.

[polymorphic]

Zone Alarm has been known to cause windows 7 to just freeze and die (no blue screen of death) some time back and they kept saying it was fixed when it wasn't. It was not specifically related to utorrent - simply having a large number of connections to the outside world (such as with a torrent) would cause it to crash. I know because the same thing happened to me until I got rid of it.

Firewalls and virus checkers are often problematical, so it's always a good idea to turn them off temporarily (if possible) while testing for problems.

[Mac-the-Knife]

Turning off firewalls and antivirus programs will not define whether they are the cause of problems, you need to COMPLETELY uninstall them for that.

[polymorphic]

Yes, my bad.

Some you can turn off in msconfig and reboot, but most require completely de-installing because they are still running no matter what and they often have multiple background services that simply reactivate them after rebooting. Turning them off within the program itself does not work. Uninstalling them is the only way to make sure.