Tip: Purge the Downloads Queue!
 

LW 5 users only need to Cancel their downloads which are zero %. LW 5 automatically deletes the incomplete file when you cancel the download.

For LW 4 see below & link below for post #15)

(Edit: See post #15 for sample image, some things changed in later LW 4 versions.)



What to do when Limewire has slowed to a crawl?

The tips in this forum for using LimeWire most efficiently are tops. I have one of my own to share too.

Sometimes, despite you doing everything right, LimeWire is still stuck in the mud. You may be waiting minutes before it responds to a click. There is one last thing still to do: purge LimeWire's downloads queue. This has worked great every time for me.

You may have too many downloads queued. To check, open LimeWire's "Incomplete" folder in the Finder and see what it says at the bottom of the window. How many items are there in it? If it says "5,000 items", you need to lose some.

What to do about it? If LimeWire is not running, launch it and wait for it to settle down before going on. Have a sleep or go for a drive. Give it as much time as you can and then go to the Downloads window in LimeWire.

Double-click on the heading "Progress" at the top of that column. Wait patiently while LimeWire sorts the queued downloads, with those nearest completion first. Be prepared to wait just as patiently for each of the other stages in this process. It is worth it in the end.

When the word "Progress" has an arrow next to it pointing down, you are ready to go on. Note the name of a file that is queued for download towards the top of the window. Click once in the middle of the vertical scroll bar to the right of LimeWire's Downloads window. Wait for the name of a new download to appear at the top of the window. Click the vertical scroll bar again and repeat the process. Keep doing this until you can see a download with a value in the "Progress" column of zero%.

Click once on the name of the first download that has a progress of zero%. Wait for it to be highlighted. Click on the slider of the vertical scroll bar to the right, keeping the mouse button held down. Wait for a minute like that, then, without releasing the mouse button, drag the slider all the way down to the bottom of the window and let go. Wait for the slider on-screen to follow your movement.

Hold the shift key down and click once on the name of the last download. This tells LimeWire to select all the downloads between the first one that was zero% and the last one. Let go of the shift key. Wait for all the downloads you can see in the window to be highlighted. Click the red stop sign at the bottom of the Downloads window. This will purge all those selected downloads. After a few seconds, you will be astonished to see LimeWire come alive again, just like when it was new.

Go back to LimeWire's "Incomplete" folder. Press command-2 to get a list view of that window. Press command-J for "Get info". Make sure there is a tick (check) next to "Size". Close the "Get info" window. In the "Incomplete" window, click once on the word "Size" at the head of its column. All the partial files in LimeWire's "Incomplete" folder are now sorted by size.

Scroll until you can see the first partial file with a size of zero. Click once on it. Scroll more to the very end of the window. Hold the shift key down and click once on the last file with a size of zero. Press command-delete to move all those files of zero size to the trash. You have already told LimeWire to ignore those files from now on when you purged its download queue. Now you are removing the records of them from your hard disk too. This will let the computer cope with a lean and mean "Incomplete" folder. Empty the trash.

What have you done? The files you have trashed were of two kinds:
- things you had been trying to download but which you would never get because the computer that had them was not configured correctly to give them to you, and
- things you might have got eventually but have failed to all this time.

LimeWire was spending all its energy trying again and again at too many things that just weren't happening.

You can still try again in future. When you do a search, each of those downloads you aborted will show a white square icon with a diagonal rip through it. By all means, try again. Now you might succeed.

How does your Downloads queue get into such a state? If the files you like are small, it is easy to lose track of how many you have queued. For example, my special thing is picture files of average 100 KB or smaller. Of course, none of us waits for each one to finish downloading before trying for others. We queue what we can and go to bed with the prospect of seeing what goodies LimeWire has left for us in the morning. We just need to keep an eye on how much we have loaded LimeWire up with.

Materials Used:
LimeWire 4.3.0b Pro
Mac OS 10.3.7
Mac G4 400 MHz
896 MB SDRAM
Netgear 834 modem-router
ADSL 256/64

Even easier is to find the incomplete folder on your harddrive and delete the 0% files from there.

But you should remove them from LW's downld list 1st before deleting from incomplete folder.

Why?

I have noticed two reason why you should remove downloads from LimeWire's download list first before deleting from the Incomplete folder on your hard disc. One is that your Incomplete folder will just fill up straight away again, and the other is that LimeWire's download list will still be as full and unwieldy as it ever was.

If you have things still left in the download list that are missing in the Incomplete folder, it seems LimeWire assumes you have suffered a catastrophic data loss on your hard disc. Rather than making you start each and every download all over again from scratch, it looks like LimeWire instantly creates a new empty file in the Incomplete folder for every missing download. It then carries on trying to complete the downloads as before.

Moreover, as long as the download list is still as large as it ever was, LimeWire will be slowed down as much as before. It tries to get mileage on each thing in the list.

Note that LimeWire has a built-in feature for taking care of all this in its own way, however. In its preferences, there is a maximum time to keep incomplete downloads. I can't comment on this feature, since I am one of those people who uses LimeWire in a way that defeats it. I queue heaps of downloads in frenzied fits and I adjust the maximum time in preferences to be really long so that I can keep trying to get those rare downloads that look really tantalising.

I think we're talking about two different things here. 1 is the list on the front page of limewire of all the files you are currently downloading. The other is the list in the incompletes folder.

I usually "clear inactive results" in the front page download section regularly (this takes out the "awaiting sources"), and it is much faster than selecting the files in batch. You must really be downloading hundreds of files simultaneously. This definately slows limewire down.

If I can't find results after a few hours of being connected, then I abandon hope of finding them (at least that session). I have no need to keep tons of files in the download section.

I do occasionally resume incomplete downloads to see if they are available at that time. But instead of clearing the 0kb files from the incompletes folder in limewire it sometimes is faster to just delete them from the incompletes folder. If your files are not in the downloads section they won't show up again in the incompletes folder.

harry101

HELP ME IM LOST! I am trying to clear these files your talking about but when i click onto library on l/w for the incomplete files folder, there is no number at the bottom of the wndow to tell me how many there are, and also it doesnt give a list of the status or progress of the downloads there!!!! Am I looking in completely the wrong place? Because I have got to the stage where I cannot hardly have L/W on because it slows me down so much! Its taken me nearly 15 mins just to post this!!! HELP ME PLEASE AND THANK YOU!!!

Gratis' suggestion to clear inactive results may work easier, Heather. I don't know LimeWire well enough yet to be able to help with that way.

Otherwise, this other way works for me. The reason it is so complicated is that it is for people who want to persevere with things that are downloading but too gradually. It does this by trashing things that are not downloading at all and just clogging up the system.

There may be a way to do this from the "Library" window in Limewire.

This other way, described here, doesn't use that "Library" window at all. Inside LimeWire, it uses the main LimeWire window, where you have the list of all the downloads that are queued. Outside LimeWire, it uses the "Incomplete" folder that is on the computer's hard disc.

On a mac, you get to that Incomplete folder outside LimeWire, using the Finder, which is what shows up on the menu bar at the top of the screen after you have clicked once on the desktop. You can also go to the Finder on a mac by holding down the command key (next to the space bar) and pressing the tab key repeatedly until you get on the blue smiley face, then letting go. A third way is to click once on the blue smiley face in the dock, at the bottom of the screen.

In the Finder, under File, choose "Find". Where it says "Search in", the no-brainer is "Everywhere". Where it says "Name contains", type "Incomplete" and click "Search". You will get a list. Double-click on the folder whose name is "Incomplete". That will give you the window for that folder.

In my first post I said "see what it says at the bottom of the window" but since updating my system I see now that the info to check is at the top of the window. On my computer, LimeWire slows down when there are more than 2,000 files in that folder. Older computers may slow down with fewer. If there are not many files in that folder, this way may not do much.

Please note that the other tips in the LimeWire manual (currently at http://www.limewire.com/english/content/userguide.shtml) are more important to try first. I resort to the method here when those things are not enough.

Sorry. When I wrote "LimeWire Manual", I meant "LimeWire FAQ" (currently at the same location: http://www.limewire.com/english/content/userguide.shtml).

Will Pausing the 0% files work the same way without having to lose track of those files you wanted to eventually D/L?