WinMX crashes computer

[mlv12321]

Hi,

I have a slight problem with WinMX v3.22, namely this;
I start WinMX and after running it for a while (without any problems) my connection speed sudddenly drops to zero, even though it seems I am still on-line (the internet icon remains in the system tray, and it keeps telling me I'm connected).
So I can no longer use WinMX, my browsers, or my e-mail.
I try disconnecting and reconnecting, but that doesn't work.
Finally, I decide to reboot, only to find that that doesn't work either; I get the " Windows shutting down" message but nothing else happens.
So I just cut the power to the computer. Now that works like a charm, but it isn't really the best thing to do to a computer...running Win98SE.
I have a 128/512kb DSL connection (thus I connect to WinMX network using the secondary connection type).

If someone could help me with this, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanx,

mlv

[crackerjacker]

you probably should limit the amount of bandwidth for incoming and outgoing. this means also to limit the amount of uploads based on your upload criteria. for and upload in the 128 k byte range leave your upload to about 6 or 7 kbs, that way your computer wont be going crazy. and btw leave it open for 2 slots. that way your computer will not be causing problems. this happen to me and i resolved this issue by doing this. stick to these limits. :fire

[-ToMsTeR-]

I have the same problem since I upgraded to 3.22.

WinMX runs fine for a few minutes, then the computer completly freezes for about 20 seconds, then comes back to life for a couple of seconds, then freezes again (I've lost my cable connection by this time. This happens continuously unit I'm forced to switch of @ the mains.

Only happened since the 3.22 upgrade.

I'm running WinXP Pro

[mlv12321]

Thanks for the tip! It seems to be working well now, though it's a shame that over 50% of my upload bandwidth can't be utilized...

Thanks again!

mlv

[Rickio]

I have dsl and I cannot get decent download speeds unless I use secondary connection. I noted lot's of people are having problems or slow speeds because something has been changed in the new version. Not sure why it is this way.
But I get lightening fast downloads now.

[eclectica]

With an upload of 16 KB a second, you could set it to like 13000; you don't have to limit your upload bandwidth to half. The thing that will knock you out of service is too many uploads at once, so you might want to limit the amount of total uploads to 3. I had the same problem on dialup, where if ten people uploaded from me the whole connection died. Then when I got ADSL, it still did the same thing if too many people uploaded from me at once.

[mlv12321]

Well, things went fine for quite a while. I really thought the problem had been solved. Then it happened all over again...
Even though I had limited the # of uploads to 2, just to be on the safe side.
The crash seems inevitable, so I'm starting to think maybe WinMX just isn't for me.
But if anyone knows of another solution I could try, I'd be glad to hear it.
Thanx

mlv

[eclectica]

Maybe try WinMX 3.1 or 2.6, which don't use as many resources?
http://www.tatom.org/public

How powerful is your computer?

[mlv12321]

PIII 500 Mhz, 128MB RAM: should be powerfull enough according to WinMX. But I'll give v2.6 a try anyway, I hope that does the trick.
Thanks.

mlv

[mlv12321]

Well, I tried v2.6...it didn't work. I used NapMX to get an updated list of servers and again everything went great for a while, but then the same thing happened all over again. This time I had the upload bandwidth limited to 10kB and # of uploads limited to 3.
Are there any known conflict issues with certain software? Firewalls maybe? I run ZoneAlarm and I know it instantly crashes my computer if I try to connect without having added the adapters for my ADSL connection to the local zone. But I don't see how that could have anything to do with WinMX though...
Is there anything else I could try?
Thanks

mlv

[mlv12321]

It seems the problem is not limited to WinMX; I tried using Grokster, but after some time the exact same thing happend.
Too bad Audiogalaxy's shutdown, everything went great with the AGsat.
I just don't understand what could be causing the problem, if anyone can help me I'd really appreciate it!
Thanx

mlv

[mlv12321]

HAHA! Succes!
I think I finally may have found the problem. Being rather desperate, I decided to undo the change made to the registry settings (it increased the receive buffer size) since I'd tweaked my connection at PCPitstop.
Don't ask my why this works, but I've been running WinMX for hours now without even the slightest glitch! Funny, eh?

[eclectica]

So using PCPitstop prior to using WinMX is what caused you your troubles?

[mlv12321]

Nope, WinMX crashed some time after I posted that last message. I was wondering how that could've possibly worked anyway, so I wasn't all too surprised (but slightly disappointed) when it didn't.
I've now installed a patch for Win98SE NDIS intermediate drivers.
I hope this works better.

[crackerjacker]

could it be that your that your on a network and others are also downloading on other filesharing programs. or it might be * a bug* u should send the bug to winmx, so they might be able to correct it or figure it out.
I know that if your on a network, and your capped at 128 kilobytes have that upload speed will go to the other computer too. this might mean that if your uploading on one computer and another at the same time it could kill your bandwidth.
hey maybe yet, i believe it could be also this, that when your doing a search, you should stop the search after awhile, to avoid consuming extra bandwidth, now again this could be the problem.

[mlv12321]

I'm not sharing a network, so that shouldn't be the problem. I haven't tried the stopping-the-searches thing you mentioned, but I'll give it a go.
Thanx

mlv

[eclectica]

(mlv12321 from July 7th)
I have a 128/512kb DSL connection (thus I connect to WinMX network using the secondary connection type).
This is a contradiction. You have the ability with your computing power to connect to a primary connection. Is this something overlooked, and you are actually connecting to a primary connection all this time?

[mlv12321]

Well, not quite. WinMX says a secondary connection for users with limited DSL upstream bandwidth (i.e. 128kbps) may give better results. I tried a primary connection when I started using WinMX and it crashed the computer faster than you can say ' ping'... and crashing it even more thoroughly than I'm used to with the secondary connection as well.
But your post gave me an idea. I figured the primary connection should at least work. Slowly maybe, but safely nonetheless.
So I uninstalled ZoneAlarm (which I was using untill now) and installed Tiny Personal Firewall instead, and at the moment the primary connection actually works! I'll still have to see for how long though....
And I think I now know what WinMX meant with a secondary connection being better than primary for people like me: I have upload speed set at 12kB, but users can only download from me at 3.5kB! If I check the bandwidth monitor, it says outgoing speed is +/- 12kB. Thus it seems +/-8.5kB is utilized by the primary connection.

So which is better: primary or secondary?

Thanx

mlv

[eclectica]

I hear that primary is better for getting files but bad for your computer resources. As far as paying your dues to the P2P community, you can do it by devoting your upload bandwidth to people getting files from you, or devote it by being part of the WPNP machinery. I don't understand how it works, but I imagine that by connecting to primary you are running a type of opennap server off of your computer, with secondary users conecting to you, and all of the primary users such as you are linked together to make it WinMX. So what would happen to the WPNP if no one signed up as primary?

If you try a primary connection you can opt for the least intensive one on your bandwidth.

I can't run one because you need a 266 mhz computer.

For those of you running primary connections, I am curious as to how many people are actually connected to your computer at a time. You can go to your start menu, and then at "run" type in netstat -an 15 to see all of your active connections. Or download this program, which is a little more user friendly:
http://www.tatom.org/public/netmon160.exe

[mlv12321]

Here's the latest situation: the primary connection eventually froze. The secondary connection I consequently tried equally froze.
I have now set WinMX as unable to accept TCP connections or send/receive UDP datagrams, and I set Bandwidth sample duration from 4 to 9 seconds...just for the heck of it.

[mlv12321]

OK, that didn't work. Now trying setting throttle process interval to 450ms and increasing bandwidth sample duration to 15 sec.
Maybe something interesting will happen.

[mlv12321]

Ha! I found something interesting, maybe it helps; after I lost the connection (yes, again ;-), I tried unplugging and then reconnecting the line to the splitter on my modem. I tried connecting to the internet again and it worked, including WinMX! So now I don't have to reboot all the time. But being disconnected every once in a while is still pretty annoying, so if anyone has any idea as to what might be the problem please let me know!
Thanx

mlv

[mlv12321]

I have to stop being so happy with every little triumph; disconnecting the splitter worked once, but not twice. So I had to reboot again.
I've tried switching the modem off and on, that didn't work either.
I guess I'll re-try WinMX when I feel like reinstalling win98 again.
Maybe when LinMX is available I'll try that...if it's ever released.
So, unless anyone knows something else I could try, I'm just going to give it a rest for now.
Thank you all for your help nonetheless.

mlv

[muff_top10]

I just installed Netmon out of curiousity. I have 66 connections. All thru Winmx? I'll keep checking just to see.

[eclectica]

mlv12321, what kind of DSL modem do you have? Maybe some are more reliable than others? Is it a USB modem or ethernet? Also can you install Millennium to see if that makes a difference?

Did you try running WinMX by not connecting to either primary or secondary connections, and instead being only connected to "opennap" servers?


muff_top10

I have 66 connections. All thru Winmx?
Go to view to display only your active connections, to get an accurate count. Then minus how many "opennap" servers you are connected to, and all uploads and downloads, as well as all webpages you are on to see how much the primary connection is giving you by itself. And of those connections, how many are secondary users connected to you versus how many nodes are you connected to, I wonder.

[mlv12321]

I'm using an Alcatel A1000 ADSL Speed Touch Home ISDN Ethernet modem and it appears that modems of these series may exhibit symptoms, due to the so-called "Sync/Nosurf" problem, that are a lot like what I've been experiencing.
I found the explanation here ==> http://www.mynetwatchman.com/kb/2000/06/26002.htm <==
However, since the symptoms are only slightly similar, and since I can still ping the default gateway, I am not confident that this particular issue applies to my situation. But the author did mention the possibility of different Sync/Nosurf problems.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find out anything about those.

I'm afraid I don't have WinME.

I haven't tried connecting only to OpenNap servers, but I'll try anything right now ;-)

Thanks for your help.

mlv

[eclectica]

I have an extra copy of Millennium that I bought but never used, so if you want e-mail me and I'll send it to you.

[kazall]

i will not go thru all that problem. i head wmx and did the same thing to me. do you nkow what i did? i uninstall it and dl kazaa spyware free that is. to hell with wmx

[muff_top10]

Netmon: 49 out 84 established connections. Accounting for opennap, u/l,d/l, and webpage - leaves 38 WinMX connections.
Makes sense. Someone has to be hosting all these secondary connections. I tried that because of high CPU usage, but I ended up getting almost no search results.

[muff_top10]

Right now, WinMX says 6 primary, 0 secondary????, & 119spm. By the way what is that? (spm)

[PowerMan57two]

I run win2k pro, and when I have napmx on winmx, and it's running, and then I click the X on winmx, winmx crashes for me, it says it's an errror, and that the computer must be restarted, so I only go on napmx if I rally need to find a good file

[bagpipechick]

don't feel bad--winmx causes my computer to lose time, (hours) freeze up and eventually crash, no other program has caused that to happen

[Merseymike]

I have given up on WinMX as well. It simply doesn't seem to work on my computer...same problems as everyone else

[mlv12321]

Ha ha! This time I've really found the problem! For some odd reason it took me weeks to find, but apparantly there is a problem in Win98(SE) with the VPN section, namely the file "netpptp.sys".
I replaced it with a fixed version, then made a primary connection (which normally failed after +/-30 min.) and I have been running WinMX without a glitch for over two hours now.
Anyone with an ADSL connection via VPN on Win98(SE), and who is experiencing the same problems, could try replacing the file "Netpptp.sys". I downloaded it from this page ==>http://www.adsl-online.net/downloads/pafiledb.php?PHPSESSID=c1c6fbc4fc07a58f666254565dc c3705&action=viewcat&id=7<== (it's in Dutch, but just click on the relevant link and on the next page click on the text "Klik hier om te Downloaden" and everything should work fine.)

@eclectica: thanks for the offer; it appears that upgrading to WinME would also have solved my problem :-)

Thanks again for all the help!

mlv

[icewind]

Does someone have a solution to this problem? im new to this and i did try what some people advised to fix the crashing problem, but it doesn't work. Maybe im changing the wrong options? can anyone tell me exactly where to do, so i know if im changing the right things. thanx