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"This program is freeware, if you paid for it you have been scammed.."


aryx

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Dread, I can appreciate where you're coming from. I'm sure that developers get lots of whining complaints about things that have already been fixed in later versions.

But for me, this is not a big-picture philosophical debate. And my guess is it's a serious problem for a fair number of people (this subject has a lot of reads, and those are only the people who could find the forums and spent time to search the forums and find this specific subject, which is not always easy to do. a teeny-tiny portion of the users ever come here.)

For me, this is a specific problem about a specific program. I've tried all the proposed fixes and have tried all the newer versions. It's only after doing those things that I'm even thinking of trying the last version that worked for me.

Thank you for informing me about where files are stored. I'll try my proposed solution and will ask for no support. If it doesn't work, I can always download the latest version again and wait for a solution.

To anyone reading this, in general, I agree with Dread, it's always best to try the latest version of any program (including utorrent) before reporting a bug or something broken. Try the latest versions of utorrent and if they work for you, great! Don't bother Dread or anyone else until you've tried the latest version. It's only after doing that, and not having it be successful, that I'm going to try an old version.

Thank you for the response.

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Ok! This thread sure has had a lot of activity. I want to solve this issue!

First, the reasoning:

Not only do we want to protect users from paying for uTorrent, but we would also like to prevent companies from shipping uTorrent with bundled settings/resume file to do their, possibly hidden, bidding. We see many update checkins which do not want an auto update, and many crash dumps that indicate uTorrent was perhaps bundled with malware.

Then, the problem:

The current IDs are formed from (an obfuscation of!) the computer's MAC address and the C:\ volume serial number. As noted, this can change over time, creating this warning. Providing subversion mechanisms, as Ultima says, is as good as removing it for the people it's supposed to be for, while still leaving it for the regular users that don't want it.

Now, the solution:

We could remove it, of course. Or, we could find something that works for eveyone. How about simply based on volume serial number? Do people change C:\ that often? For people that switch computers often and take their settings with them, uTorrent could be made to keep a list of previous, valid IDs. Since it's impractical to list all of them, and we could even impose an upper limit, this should useless for abuse.

Thoughts?

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alus, thanks much for offering a proposed solution. Much appreciated. I'm all for getting the problem fixed for everyone.

As a user and not a developer, I don't know enough about how volume serial numbers change to know whether the idea will work or not, but it sounds promising.

Previously, I'd also mentioned eliminating the pop-up box and placing the message in the title bar of utorrent itself. People would still get the message and the program would work. It seems like a simple change like that might work too.

However you decide to approach it, it's welcome to see solutions being proposed. Thank you.

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If that is the only check made, I now WHOLEHEARTEDLY question the validity of people's stories about it triggering every time uT runs. Mind you I don't say they're lying, sure it triggers and it may trigger after a reformat, or hardware updates, but this is to be expected for ALL software in this day and age right?

In actuality, companies I have worked for used similar information to create a hash for verification purposes and it worked just fine. I ask you this: Is it possible there is another check in the code which could be causing the message to display on every startup? Say for example in Ultima's scenario above, where a computer was set to standby and in the meantime the network adapter was disabled?

On to the "best" way to solve it I think would be first before you make any changes for someone who IS ACTIVELY experiencing it to reproduce the behaviour so you can see what's up. With the limits of the latest stable (I don't see much about the 1.8 line in here) logging functionality is it possible to see what "trips" the switch each time, say via a crash dump? If not and someone wishes to update for ACTIVE BUG TESTING is there some debugging information apart from the validating of settings.dat keys done on-runtime which can be modded for viewing of these messages?

Also :( I apologize if I seem harsh sometimes when criticizing people who swear by their bug reports but c'mon, its a story of numbers. I'd be more apt to even try to reproduce some of people's problems (with extra programs installed / running concurrently) if by the time they reported them online they weren't so fed-up with troubleshooting that they'd rather eat glass.

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As a user and not a developer, I don't know enough about how volume serial numbers change to know whether the idea will work or not, but it sounds promising.

Unfortunately this is not the drive's serial number, so it is not as permanent as the drive itself. It is however only set when the drive is formatted. Clones (i.e. ghost) would likely have the same serial number, which might be a benefit to some use cases.

Previously, I'd also mentioned eliminating the pop-up box and placing the message in the title bar of utorrent itself. People would still get the message and the program would work. It seems like a simple change like that might work too.

My only issue with this method is that running uTorrent hidden would not alert the user at all.

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Alus, yes you're right that would not solve the running hidden issue. Thank you for bringing that up by the way, as it helps to explain why this nag screen is appearning in the first place. I think for a lot of people it made no sense to be imposing this on everyone just because a few people got ripped off by someone else, and there's no way utorrent could be held responsible for that. But now that you mention the hidden issue it makes total sense. Misplaced blame, bad press, etc., would almost certainly fall on utorrent, even though undeserved, if someone is using it to create a bunch of zombies. We're dealing with a much larger issue here.

But maybe developers can think of other ways to prevent that specific problem.

A message in the title bar would probably be good enough for just those people who were charged for the program. Maybe that's the solution for those who were ripped off and are running the program out in the open.

Maybe the specific issue of running hidden/embedded could be solved with a separate fix? Is there a way to know that it's been embedded in something else, or that another program is calling for it? And then prevent it? Maybe THAT'S the real issue for developers to focus on.

Plus, that problem would likely have the added bonus of developers talking to developers (people who have a similar level of understanding), rather than developers talking to users, where there is often plenty of miscommunication and yelling at one another.

So I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here, but if the freeware message in the title bar is a simple solution to the "got scammed" issue, would it make sense to start focusing on a simple way to prevent embedded/hidden running, if there is such a thing? And maybe there's a solution to that which doesn't involve the dialog box at all. Maybe a whole different approach is what's needed.

I just offer that as a suggestion and I freely admit that I'm ignorant on the super-technical stuff.

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  • 3 months later...

@alus re: "The current IDs are formed from (an obfuscation of!) the computer's MAC address and the C:\ volume serial number."

There must be more to it than that. I'm seeing the message VERY frequently, and agree with other comments re network adapters. My wireless adapter is often disabled and later enabled, after which I see the message popup. BUT,

- My MAC address is unchanged.

- My C:\ volume serial number is unchanged.

So why is the message reappearing? You must be throwing something else in there. If the above comment is correct, then this behaviour is a bug and needs to be redesigned.

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@alus re: "The current IDs are formed from (an obfuscation of!) the computer's MAC address and the C:\ volume serial number."

There must be more to it than that. I'm seeing the message VERY frequently, and agree with other comments re network adapters. My wireless adapter is often disabled and later enabled, after which I see the message popup. BUT,

- My MAC address is unchanged.

- My C:\ volume serial number is unchanged.

So why is the message reappearing? You must be throwing something else in there. If the above comment is correct, then this behaviour is a bug and needs to be redesigned.

Unfortunately Windows decides which MAC address to use in calculation. Something about disabling the adapter must cause it to choose a different MAC address, say of the LAN adapter.

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Guys, all the problems come because that damn message blocks downloads from starting and ruins any automation one could do on their PC. Simply make the program start first, and then show this message using another thread and another window so that it doesn't block the entire program, and that's all!

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