I was able to get connected last night and downloaded one song. I did that jar thing and unzipped the files in into the limeware folder, or whatever i read that someone else did earlier in the forum. However, today i could no longer connect. I downloaded limeware in July or August and just started having this problem in the past few weeks.

I am using my computer at home. I live in an apartment complex that provides internet access. I plug my ethernet cord into the wall and I'm connected.

Yo, Ginny. Did you do the "Recieved incoming..." ? If so, then what did it say?
Aside from that, have you tried deleting the prefs?

Mine said False, although I have the windows firewall disabled and Zone alarm is set to allow limeware.

I havetried deleting the preferences. Am I going to have to delete the preferences everytime?

i actually don't have the Pro version installed

Yo, Gin

Try disabling all firewalls just to see if it will connect.

Ok. Windows firewall is disabled and I completely shut down Zone alarm and was able to get a "fair" connection, then I tried turning Zone alarm back on and the connection dropped to poor...then about 30 seconds later it disconnected.

Am I jsut going to have to turn off Zone alarm when i want to down load? Is that going to put my computer at risk? Is there anything else that can be configured in Zone alarm that would allow me to run it and Limeware at the same time.

And...will I ever be able to get a full strong connection again?

prior to about a month ago I ran zone alarm and limeware simulanteously and never had a problem. So whats different now?

Worked great for me WinXP.
Have to delete EVERY folder once you find the .limewire directory.

connection problems
 

i also have been having a terrible time getting and staying connected. i tried everything that has been suggested here but to no avail. one thing i noticed was that every time i deleted owner/limewire file, i had to go back and change my options because most of the files i am sharing are not in the shared folder. finally, i moved all the files into the shared folder and i have not had a problem since. it may just be a coincidence but may be worth trying.

v_amber61 do you want to tell us what your problem is? See http://www.gnutellaforums.com/announ...?s=&forumid=29 & supply us all details incl. connection devices (modem/routers) & where you're connecting from.

So still no fix for the connection problem. I tried again today shutting down zone alarm and then trying to connect but it did not work. This is so frustrating. Maybe zone alarm isn't the problem if turning it off didn't not help this time.


Should i just give up on limeware? Is there anything else that can fix this?

Did you do the XP SP2 update? Search forum for sp2. For zone alarm see link at the bottom of the page at http://www.limewire.com/english/content/firewalls.shtml You still haven't told us the model of your modem & router. Please forward these details. The soonner you provide ALL details the sooner we can sort this. Rather than waiting to ask you bit by bit.

I have just deleted Kazaa, becourse it was to slow and kept crashing. But it was at lest able to connect. I have delete the .limewire directory (located at c:\windows). And I have completely shut down Norton. But it is still not working. I am accessing the internet trough a local server at my dormitory (I do not know what routers etc. we are using but the server is unix-based).
I still have:
recieved incoming this session: false (I do not have a firewall)

I have limewire 4.1.10 and windows 95 secondt edition

please help

You may not have a firewall but your dorm almost surely has one that blocks P2P connections. Ask the dorm's IT dep for more info.

I'm on a Mac g4, 9.2 os running Limewire 3.5.8 on a dial up connection. I lost the ability to download so I scrapped Limewire and reloaded it. I can connect but it appears I can't share my files although I have selected in options the folders that contain my music files. I've tried downloading but when the file is complete I can't find it saved in the chosen directory or anywhere else. Before this happened the last thing I was downloading was a file that gave me the "this file has a glitch" message but I chose to continue downloading the file because this had not caused a problem in the past. Could this be what corrupted me? I do have Norton file saver. I tried your suggestion in the thread about looking for a fire wall but I could not tell whether there is one there or not. I'm pretty computer illiterate so please make any instructions simple.

Thanks

Forgot. . . I'm using Earthlink btw.

Go to your LW menu Options>Bug Report & press View Example. I think your version of LW has that option. See this link for image example Post back & tell us if it's True/False. At least with a dial up it's highly unlikely you'll have a router, right? Where are you trying to connect from (home, school, work, etc.)? Normally in your situation whilst LW is closed, you should delete your LW Prefs called .limewire which are found listed at the top in the system preferences folder when viewed in list mode. Also make sure you have the most recent java version for OS 9.2 If you have 9.2.2 update to MRJ 2.2.6 for OS 9.2.2 OR MRJ 2.2.5 for OS 8.1-9.2

As far as your dwnlds go Your LW Dwnld Folder can be found if you go to LW's menu Options>Saving this will tell you the name & location of this folder. If you also share this folder, it should be listed in the LW Library window where you can highlight a file within it & use the Explore button which will open the foldr for you.

I forgot to mention, before you delete the LW prefs, make anote of all your option settings. Once you've deleted the prefs you'll need reset them. If LW dwnlds become a bit stuffy, deleting the prefs can often fix it.

yes my dorm problebly has a firewall, but it dos not matter I installed bearshare insted and it works fine (so far). But thanks anyway.

If something works (anything) it's because it probably uses a port that isn't blocked by the firewall set by te IT dep... Try using the same port that Bear uses with LW

Thanks for replying. I did download MRJ 2.6.6 but when I tried to install I got a dialog box that said:

The file "Svensk" already on "Macintosh HD" is more recent than what you are about to install. . .



So do I still want to install this MRJ 2.6.6?

Bearshare is using the same port as Limewire (6346). So I do not understand why it works for Bearshare but not for Limewire. I think I will just keep Bearshare (it is also a Gnutella Client).

help
 

HELP! I've been fighting this for 3 days and I'm ready to take a hammer to this computer. My problem is when I try and connect, everything appears to be working for 6 to 8 seconds and then I get disconnected. I've read through the forums and tried the fixes recommended but to no avail. Here is a list of what i've already done and know.
I completely deleted McAfee off my home computer.
I am running WindowsME
I use a wireless network to my ISP
My connection speed is 512k
They do not block Gnutella
I do not have a router
I looked at the bug report example and it states"Received incomming this session: False."
I do not think I am going through a proxy server. How can I tell?
I've totally re-loaded limewire Pro.
If I have another firewall enabled on my PC, I cant find it.
I ran the new jar as suggested.

Can anyone help? PLeeeeease

Go here & tell us what happens: http://www3.limewire.com:6346/ Where are you trying to connect from; home, school, work, etc. ? You said this has been happening for 3 days. Did you install anything new in the weeks before that? Have you updted your Java?

hopeless connection problems
 

I've been having major issues with limewire for the last few days too, but not just limewire. Gnutella in general. When limewire died, I tried a few others that checked multiple networks and they also could not contact gnutella. Someone on one of the user groups for one of the programs sent out an updated 'stable nodes' list that when put in the appropriate folder, made that program connect to gnutella, but limewire is still hopeless...I might get an unstable connection to a handfull of files to search, but nothing downloads. Is it possible that some outside influence is messing with the major 'nodes'/important IPs? for. ex. blocking them some way to disturb the network?

my ISP does not block this service and I have a 2 mbit connection so I have enough bandwidth, but am not getting connected. Have also removed limewire entirely, reinstalled, run system tools to clean up system and so on.

Please do 2 things, 1st run the Bug Report check (Click this link for image example) & report back your results; True/False. 2. Provide us your OS version, connection type (& your modem & router brands & model no.'s), where you are trying to connect from (home, school, work, etc.) Do yo know which version of Java you have? Haave you installed anything recently before LW started having problems?

How do you run the jar file
 

Hey I downloaded the jar file but am not sure of what to type in the command window to make it run.

I'm running XP

Here is what I have done so far:

1. deleted the .limewire folder
2. Went in to my advanced settings and added Gnutella for both the TCP and UDP along with the 6346.

Still not connecting. It attempts to connect but in the end I get the good ole' DISCONNECTED.

reply to moderator
 

Received incoming this session: false in bug report. Was able to connect a little this time, but relatively poorly compared to normal. Was able to download one song with many sources, otherwise hardly anything will connect at all, and then only at very low speeds.

I have a motorola surfboard cable modem SB4200E, 2 mbit connection which I've verified yesterday to be at least 1.7 mbit in reality, mac 500 mhz g4 running newest system, newest java, newest limewire. my hub is a nexswitch SD050s.

It's been unstable off and on, often crashing at night when the computer was idle other than limewire. I did install Firefox right before it dropped out completely, but uninstalled it and limewire and reinstalled limewire, plus installed limewire on another machine in my home network and got the same result. The network connections fluxuated a bit before they really bottomed out.

The best I've been able to get was
Current Hosts 3
Total Hosts 111
total files 36,330
total file MBs 93,981

The top of the program never shows me how many mb or files since this began, only Enabling open information sharing.

Today, it seems a little better, I'm able to download a few items, but only if they have a high nr of sources. Generic searches such as mpg or avi or mp3 return far fewer files than normal.

Re: help
 

We still don't know wether you tried deleting the prefs or not (I won't ask wether you are connecting from your home or not, I figure that you are)

Jeannemrm: I haven't found too much info on your modem type other than other people have had problems with it. Have you researched whether there's an update for your modem software. Apparently an update overcomes some issues. I don't know any more than that. There's nothing in the manual about forwarding a port. I don't suppose you've switched the wrong computer for access to the net. What firewalls do you have & what OS version? Do you run moe than one comp on e the net at the one time & what do they do?

reply to moderator: connectivity problems
 

Haven't checked for upgrade as it's a cable company owned modem. I am in Europe, which may be why you haven't seen much on it. I'll check with Motorolas pages and see if there is a mac runnable update. I don't have firewalls turned on at the moment, and while there are three computers sharing the network, the others are barely active. My line is 2 mbits, so it should tolerate three machines ...only one of which is doing any heavy downloading...or at least trying to.

system info as comes up in bug report:
LimeWire version 4.1.10
Java version 1.4.2_05 from Apple Computer, Inc.
Mac OS X v. 10.3.5 on ppc
Free/total memory: 11073008/19988480

I found 4.1.10 via macupdate.com, though your webpages say that 4.0.8 was the newest...had same error with that version. Limewire has worked fine until the last few days aside from occational crashes...mostly at night.

I had some connection earlier today, but after having to force quit it and restart, it is not connecting at all again. Others are reporting trouble connecting to gnutella via other multi system programs as well. The one program was able to connect after changing the stable nodes file in it's gnutella folder.

What's the total memory you have on that computer? And do you run other apps whilst you're running it overnight. I convert 1 or 2 videos overnight & don't have trouble with LW, but I do occasionally have problems with the computer losing communication with the modem. Which means I need to restart both the computer & modem. But my g4's only a 733.

reply to moderator lord of rings
 

I've got 1.38 gb memory, a 120 mb hd where the downloads are put, and I don't leave much on...occationally yahoo messenger or mail at night. My little, ancient performa powermac in the bedroom is often online w/ internet radio at night, but that shouldn't be enough to knock my big machine and lw off the network. My machine is a bit old and takes too much capacity to do things like convert movies and run lw. I've also found that VLC and LW don't always do well together so that if I want to watch a show on vlc, I usually have to cut out of LW.

A little while ago(this evening), I got an error saying it could not connect to gnutella hosts and that that was usually due to content blocking of port or firewall...but neither is the case unless the blocking is coming from outside my ISP which does not block. On a whim, I've not configured my firewall and made the specific ports open for LW/gnutella etc and I'm getting some things downloaded, but as before, we're talking only thousands rather than millions of files 'available' to browse, and around 100000 mb availabe rather than the usual 3000 gb I have usually gotten.

Couldn't really find anything for the modem at motorolla either cept for pc users who use usb connection rather than ethernet. It's otherwise plug and play it seems.

I'm not sure at present. You're getting a false report which suggests something's not right. If it were you'd be getting better uplds & dwnlds. For the time being may I suggest 2 things: 1. Do a SAFE start & Repair Permissions (even if it doesn't fix the problem, it should be done both before & after installations of any kind. It certainly wont do any harm!) 2. When you're away from your computer, hide all windows except the search/dwnld window (ie: go to View>Hide>Monitor, Connections & Library window. Also Hide LW in the background. This will help stop the build up of ram use & VM growth.

I'm hoping another member will add his piece here also within the next 24-36 hrs.

I suspect your nextswitch hub to be the problem. I tried to find infos on google about it, but it seems pretty unknown which is a bad sign. Try to connect your machine running LW directly to the modem first. If it works, your hub is the problem. Also look at the bug report in LW to see if the incomings are true or false when connected directly to the modem. If false, there is a enabled firewall on your modem.

Bonne chance!

reply to moderator..connection issues
 

One of the first things I did was to run first norton systemworks, which found some issues and supposedly fixed them....then, I ran disk utilities from a panther install disk and did a disk repair (twice, just in case) and then a permissions repair. I've been working as a mac tech for a couple of years at a publishing company.

I can try to hide windows if necessary. All this happened relatively suddenly a few days ago...have had switch for about a year, but will try it directly tomarrow just in case something isn't right with it. But it's worked until now at least. Will see if I can find the user guide for it (fat chance I'd guess, cause I'm in the middle of packing to move transatlantic!) and see if I can find the IP address to get into the switch, if possible and see if there is any kind of firewall.

Why do I always attract the strangest glitches? Probably cause I keep fighting with them til I figure them out or find someone who can!

followup
 

tried a direct connect to the cable modem....maybe a tiny bit faster, but no real difference. did find why the one value was false....that was a setting I'd changed in the prefs in trying to solve the lack of connections problem based on something I'd read in one of the forum threads, so now the incoming is true, but I'm still only getting a relative handful of available files/connections for some reason; rarely more than 100,000 mb as opposed to the usual 3,000 gb I've had up until recently.

Good news about your incoming being true. Tried maximising upld & dwnld success by optimising LW? If you haven't already, check these tips: Tips 1 (1st post only) & also Tips 2
Are you still using LW 3?

reply to moderator
 

am using the newest limewire, found via macupdate.com which is 4.1.10 though limewire's site has newest listed as 4.0.8 for some reason.

If I streamline it/limit it though, that's not going to help the fact that I'm only getting a fraction of the normal files available to begin with, in fact, it will only make it worse! Basically, I'm getting about 1/30th of the normally available files coming up as searchable...not enough files to change the status at the top from enabling open file sharing to a running total of files and mb/gb! I have been able to get some things to download in the last 24 hours, but I'm not finding many of the things I need to find because of this.

jeannemrm: did you forget your membership sign in (only just realised you are JMRM.)

I'm rather confused with your problem. What setting was this?

Change it to what? There's something I obviously don't know here. I need to learn quick.
Do you share files? If you share, it's much easier to connect & improve your search results. Try to find popular files to share. I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Be it I'm dumb or something. It's almost impossible to find 'all' results of an item from the entire worldwide gnutella network in a search.

Do you run as an UltraPeer? What speed is your main machine?

I heard it's not a good idea to repair permissions using the startup disk b/c you're changing the permissions what they are on the disk. My nderstanding is it's better to repair permissions after a Safe start with Disk Utility on your HDD.

Oh the LW 4.1.0 version is the latest beta. It's solved many people's problems so far.

reply
 

whatever the problem was, it seems to have resolved itself for the moment. Suddenly, I've gone from having up to 3 connections to having 24 connections and over 3 million mb available to search again(see tools/statistics). At least twice earlier today, I got a repeated error message that limewire couldnt' connect to hosts w/ likely reason of either content blocking of port or wirewall...neither of which should have been the case because before I had no firewall in place, and now I've set it up w/ the appropriote ports, and my ISP does not limit the service.

As to the jmrm and jeannemrm....my mistake...I use jeannemrm on most things and put it in by habit...the forum didn't give me an error, so I assumed it was right until I tried to log back in to edit a message and couldn't and sent for my password etc.

The message about available files/mb usually comes up after the enabling open information sharing has run and a good connection has been established...it comes up at the top of the limewire browser, as a page title comes up at the top of a browser window.

As to the other item I'd changed which made the value false, In one of the forum responses, they talked about changing to some other commonly used listening port if your ISP blocked gnutellas normal port..As I didn't know if my ISP had begun this, I tried it...either I hadn't changed it back or had but then had a crash such that changes were not saved.

I still suspect some kind of network issue...it could be local here in Europe or even scandinavia that was somehow preventing a good connection, especially since it came on suddenly a few days ago and LW has been working fine for me for a long time. There have also been intermittant web and mail connection issues in the last week, but not as noticeable as the LW problem.

Thanks for the help and I'll let all know if it happens again.

Hello I own the most recent version of LW pro and have been unable to connect. It stays at the connecting (1 green bar) for as long as LW is running. The bug report says false but I do not own any firewall whatsoever. I've tryed almost every single thing anyone's put forward. I have windows xp and cable internet. I was able to connect 1 night since i've owned LW and stayed connected untill I shut down. The next day boom, No connect. I'm willing to do anything to get my $18 worth. Thanks

Uh uh, tried that...no luck (see my posts "Limewire connecting..."

I have done absolutely everything that was suggested, short of hiring a computer expert! I get bursts of turbocharge for an hour and then try to get connected for two days! I am on XP, and I am ready to go back to reading books. I am tired of staring at the "connecting" and the red levels.

I.M. Givingup can you give us a total desciption of your set up: 1. OS version, 2. What firewalls you have, 3. ram, 4. HDD space available, 5. Connection type, 6. Modem & router brand name & model numbers, 7. Where are you trying to connect from (home, school, work, etc.)?
These details are vital if you want us to find out what your connection problem is.

Make sure your Java is up to date: Java 1.5 (take the JRE)

I have seen this happen, and I have one possible reason about this behavior (connecting for some time than impossible to connect) if:
- this does not come from your ISP: your connection is still working
- you can still browse the web and send emails or discuss on IRC
- all connection attempts fail
- you use an external DSL modem with connection sharing (embedding a Ethernet adapter or hub, or a WiFi adapter)
or a router with NAT, or connect via a PC acting as a connection sharing gateway
- you are running Windows XP SP2


Windows XP SP2 also monitors the number of target (non local) IP addresses that can be reached by TCP connections: this is monitored by the OS's IP driver, within its internal routing device as a feature of its builtin firewall. This mostly concerns users of Windows XP Home and Pro editions, but not the Server editions... I don't know if this is a default tuning that can be changed. But the only solution is to terminate the process (exit LimeWire completely, including its Java VM and the taskbar icon), wait for about one minute and restart.

Windows XP SP2 has put severe limitations on the number of DNS resolution requests that can be resolved by a client process (this is used as a tool to limit the broad connectivity of a possibly installed virus trying to send spam at large speed to lots of destination hosts). The impact is that the number of DNS resolutions per timeframe is limited, and above this limit, these requests will fail, and the limit will be automatically lowered. This limit cannot be reached when running LimeWire at startup, but cn be reached after about 2 hours of successfull connection, because the connected hosts that stay online for more than 1 minute will have their IP resolved by LimeWire into hostnames. However, if your servent has run successfully for more than 1 hour, it may become a Ultrapeer candidate, and then then will start accepting remote leaf connections. The problem is that the rate of incomming connection attempts cannot be controled, and remote leaf nodes will frequently connect and disconnect.

In the past, all connected hosts were resolved to hostnames, but now this resolution will not happen before at least 1 minute of successfull connection. Given that a typical Ultrapeer will accept about 30 leaf nodes, this has the effect of putting a maximum to the number of DNS resolutions performed by LimeWire.
LimeWire has also been modified to not resolve IP to hostnames if the Connection pane is not visible.

Another problem is that Java, used in LimeWire, incorrectly implements the DNS specification, caching *for ever* the DNS results (Sun says this is part of an anti-spoofing security feature, but this is not satisfactory, and contradicts the RFCs. The impact is that the builtin Java DNS client will store obsolete records, and this includes many records related to IP or hostnames that are dynamically assigned to termporarily connected hosts, such as most connections provided by ISPs and used by home users.

Tip: LimeWire has recently been modified to not use the Java builtin DNS client, which also uses internally the local DN client provided by the OS, and it now includes a separate implementation of a conforming caching DNS client (where records will expire according to DNS protocol requirements). One problem is that Windows XP SP2 will not let LimeWire create itself connections to external DNS servers, unless the builtin XP firewall is configured to let LimeWire perform such Internet accesses (the DNS is a critical shared resource of the Internet).

But your ISP may also have set severe limitations to the number of DNS requests that can be satisfied by its customers. This is because the DNS server that your ISP connection uses is typically shared by all customers of that ISP, and the ISP's DNS server needs to be able to serve all customers equally and is necessarily limited. Some ISPs are also using this feature to detect automatically the customers that are infected by DDoS-like worms, or running P2P clients: when this limit is reached, the customer connection is reconfigured to limit more severely the number of DNS requests that can be satisifed. This has the benefit that the ISP can effectively reduce the success of DDoS worms or spamwares, and this also saves lots of bandwidth used by these worms. But some ISPs are logging those customers and will list them for analysis by external tools (including providing the list to third parties that have contracted with the ISP to monitor the legality of files shared on P2P networks). These logs can also be kept for legal purpose, but this is not possible legally in all countries. Apparently, such logging is now required in US and in all 25 countries in the E.U. that have applied the European directives.

If this is the case for you, there are two solutions:

(1) install a local caching DNS server with large enough caches, then connect this local DNS server to the ISP's server, configuring it so that it will make sure not to make too frequent resolution requests to the ISP, then configure your host to use this local DNS server instead. This is complicate for most users.

(2) close the "Connections" pane in LimeWire: LimeWire will not attempt to resolve all remote IP addresses to hostnames. But LimeWire will still need to connect sometimes to Gwebcaches, using the URLs that need to be resolved with DNS: this event will occur much more rarely now than with past versions, since now LimeWire prefers a much better alternative with UDP host caches. (If your servent was connected successfully for more than 1 hour and has become an Ultrapeer, LimeWire will not need to perform any access to GWebcaches, as its local pool of known remote hosts will be constantly filled with fresh addresses, and should not be exhausted.)

But the problem may be elsewhere: if you have a local firewall software (not the builtin Windows XP firewall), this firewall may be configured to resolve ALL incoming TCP connections for logging purpose. Consider changing the setting of this local firewall so that it will not perform this costly resolution. Such function is normally performed in offline mode when parsing webserver logs, or should be enabled ONLY if you have a *true* local DNS server with enough caching (the builtin DNS client in Windows XP has a cache but it is too much limited to work correctly for applications that will connect with lots of distinct Internet hosts).

Same thing if you have an external router: some routers will also attempt to perform DNS resolution for ANY application running on LAN, and will immediately try to cache locally the result of this resolution. This occurs if the builtin DNS proxy is enabled in the router, and your hosts on the LAN are configured to use the DNS server address of the router. The problem is that most builtin DNS procies in hardware routers have too much limited memory to cache enough DNS records, and so these records must be discarded with a LRU strategy, long before the recommanded caching time indicated by the remote DN server (which should be about 24 hours for permanent web servers, or about 1 hour for DNS resolutions of ISP-provided hosts with dynamic IP).

The solution is then to disable this DNS proxy in your router, and configure the router's builtin DHCP server so that it will not distribute its own address for the DNS, but the address of your ISP's DNS server. This hardware router's builtin DNS proxy may also be configured to work in non caching mode (if this setting is possible), so that your hosts on the LAN will continue to use it in "plug'n play" mode using the router's address provided by its builtin DHCP server.

If your router does not have DHCP, or if you can't change its settings, you'll need to manually configure your local host to not use the DNS server address provided by DHCP, but to configure manually your host with the IP address of your ISP's DNS server(s). This should also sove the problem caused by a local firewall software that monitors and resolveds all the Internet connections performed by your local applications, to detect and block known malicious hosts in their "blacklist".

But the most tricky cases come if you are running your servent on a host connected via a shared enterprise or university network: whatever you can do in your host, they control and monitor your activity, and provide you a limited access to the Internet, and should have given to you a usage policy that you must respect. LimeWire cannot do anything for these cases if your connection fails because of this external monitoring, for networks accesses that you don't own yourself... Some solutions may be possible sometimes, for example by using some other publicly accessible DNS servers available on the Internet (but you should care about the fact that those external DNS servers may not be trustful, and may redirect your internet accesses to advertizers, or modified versions of wellknown search engines like Google...). I won't recommand using such untrustable third party services, even if they are, illegitimately, called "internet accelerators"...

Note that some ISPs propose you such "internet accelerators" as a builtin feature: they will act as "transparent" proxies and will deliver you cached webpages (for faster accesses) with compressed data (useful for slow modem connections):
- AOL modem accesses for example causes such troubles, and the best you can do if you use P2P applications is to avoid AOL and seek for another ISP.
- Wanadoo's optional (subscribed and payed option) "internet accelerator" feature causes such troubles. The utility of such subscription is very questionable, given the interoperability problems it can cause, even if it successfully accelerate your experience for classical web browsing.

Finally, there's a problem that is specific to Windows XP SP2: it sometimes does not detect that the Internet connection has been shutdown and restarted on your external router, and its TCP/IP internal stack continues to use obsolete information, or sometimes Windows XP continues to use obsolete DHCP leases that have expired in the DHCP server of your router. The symptoms is that you can't perform any web activity (getting emails, browsing the web, all fails with "host not found" errors).

Sometimes this can be solved by disabling the NIC interface and reenabling it. But this sometimes fails too: the dialog box that appears when "repairing" the connection never terminates, and can't be closed even if you press the "Cancel" button (using the "Repair connection" fails for obscure reasons, as the local DHCP client in Windows XP is blocked in an internal thread waiting for some unknown event that will never occur). Even if you unplug the Ethernet cable, Windows XP will not detect this event, and the connection will remain "active" and the network icon in the status bar will not show the red-cross.

The only solution is to reboot; this looks like a bug in Windows XP SP2's builtin firewall, caused by mutual dependencies of various internal network services, causing some deadlocks when one of these service should be unlocked to fail immediately... This bug may also come from your antivirus tool that does not monitor some Windows XP events informing it that the IP connection state was reset: check that your antivirus tool is updated to work correctly with Windows XP SP2 builtin firewall (this builtin firewall informs applications via some intenal hooks that your antivirus still does not implement, or via new UPnP or SNMP events that your antivirus still does not implement, or that can only be caught if the antivirus is configured and updated with the privileges of a local administrator account).

One solution, if you already have a third-party firewall solution, is to disable the Windows XP builtin firewall, and its related features (the new "Security Center" that displays a yellow or red shild icon, and that performs automatic Windows Updates, when you are online). Get sure then to perform Windows Updates regularly (most of them are published on Tuesday by Microsoft, so if you check them once a week on Wednesday, you should be OK with security patches).

verdyp does that mean it's not wise to recommend Sun Java 1.5? 1.5 JRE seems to work better for some whereas 1.4.2 works better for others. Or is 1.5 not recommended for XP SP2 users?

When my modem stops communicating with my computer & requires a reboot of possibly both devices, do you know what causes that? Is it overloading of the processor/ram (macosx)?

Java 1.5 is still not a stable release, but it definitely improves the performance, reduces the memory footprint, and its networking support is much better. In addition, its computing speed is much faster, its multithreading support is smoother, and internally it uses much less locking operations on objects (notably in the processing of Strings). Finally, its garbage collector is faster, and better tuned, meaning that it uses internal memory in a more efficient way, and includes a memory defragmenter, meaning less swap on disk and better data locality. For performance critical operations, its support of asynchronous I/O, and audio is better tuned; it also includes the support for precompiled and shared classes, which means faster load-and-run, and a responsive application.

I don't think that there are more bugs in Java 1.5 than with Java 1.4.2. In fact, since Java 1.5 has been put into production, many bugs that are found in either platforms are updated in parallel in Java 1.4 and 1.5, because they share lots of common components. So the difference in the two platforms are less important: LimeWire uses the Java 1.4 platform which runs identically in Java 1.5. The difference in Java 1.5 is mainly in the core components that integrate the GUI: Swing and AWT components are based on Java2D, and they are identically on both platforms. But Java2D uses the native graphic APIs for the OS platform, and this includes DirectX (preferably to OpenGL on Windows), Qt and OpenGL on Linux, or MacDraw on MacOS...

Most freezes that users have experimented in the GUI have been solved in Java 1.4.2 face to Java 1.4.1, and retrofitted into Java 1.5 as well, becuase the support for native APIs is shared a lot between Java versions.

Networking components are mostly equivalent between Java versions, and they are mostly portable because they are written in 100% Java code (but note that Java 1.5 includes new StringBuilder objects instead of StringBuffers, which improves the performance in most cases because StringBuilder is not synchronized across threads; the numerous changes in Java 1.5 core classes is in the suppression of most unnecessary synchronization, and the extensive use of shared/reusable buffers to reduce the number of unique allocations and memory copies for temporary objects.

The main difference between Java 1.4 and 1.5 is the support for new language features like Generics (related but not equivalent to C++ templates), which LimeWire does not use, but that the source core classes bundled with Java can use. The binary format of class files is not equivalent, but LimeWire is compiled using Java 1.4 binary formats, without those extensions. There are also improvements in Java 1.5 regarding internationalization, with a more complete support of Unicode 4; this does not affect LimeWire which does not need or use now this.

Other improvements in Java 1.5 is that the customization of fonts is easier, supporting international fonts in a less platform-specific way. So Java 1.5 offers now a transparent support for all languages other than the default platform language. But LimeWire is built to run best in the default platform language, by letting users select these locales, and not necessary the English one.

Personnally, I have never experimented any Java VM crash or freeze since 1.5 is released, but I had a few ones with Java 1.4. Some reasons were caused by Java2D's use of DirectX, whose support in Java 1.5 is much improved, and includes more workaround for compatibility problems (notably with defective display drivers).

However I won't recommand the configuration of Java2D with OpenGL, because too many display drivers have not been so much extensively tested through OpenGL, and some of their interfaces are not multithread safe as they should, or do not work well with parallel applications. Other problems are in native font renderers, which have some known problems, solved in Java 1.5, but with partial workarounds on Java 1.4.

Things like OpenGL screensavers should be disabled in Linux, if you use LimeWire on this platform, and LimeWire will run better if your Java installation includes the support for Qt instead of OpenGL.

In most cases, crash/freeze bugs come from defects in display drivers, that don't implement the OS APIs as documented by the OS vendor, and that incorrectly assume that some events will come in some typical order, generated from the platform's graphical components. As Java bypasses most of these platform components, these events may come into a different order, still valid and possible as documented in the OS APIs, but causing, incorrect displays, hardware crashes, memory corruption, incorrect synchronization in multithreaded applications (like the platform's file explorer, or Java or LimeWire).

When you experiment such problems, get sure that you have the most up-to-date drivers for your display drivers, and that you don't use the "enhanced" but not certified versions of these drivers. Users that have tweaked their installation with such drivers are exposed to risks that such installation has not been eveluated and tested to support correctly all the OS features; Sun or Apple cannot test their Java installation across all hardware driver variants, but they do test them with the most common ones. This is a problem for those that use obsoleted display boards that were built by manufacturers that have stopped supporting them (notably all those many that had a 3Dfx board, which don't have any available upgrade that correct defects to support newer versions of their OSes). Those users are left with unsupported drivers for their new platform.

So a good question for those users is whever they should upgrade their OS, or if they should better buy a new PC or Mac with components made and supported on that platform: adding memory or changing disk will not solve those hardware-related problems, even if it theorically allows installing the new OS. The reality is that what they do is completely untested by all software providers, including Apple and Sun in their distribution of Java.

It is even more difficult to predict, for LimeWire, which networking platform will be used: this is a domain with lots of variants that are hard to reproduce, because there are specificities varying depending on technology (routers, broadband access types, proxies, addessing and naming, network autoconfiguration and discovery...) and that LimeWire does not have tested itself. Additionally, many bugs are produced by third-party networking components (including security tools like firewalls and antivirus), where there's often no definitive standard for interoperability...

The case of NAT routing is certainly one where LimeWire or any P2P application have difficulties to work with, because most Internet components were not designed for P2P. Things are changing, slowly, because P2P technologies are experimenting the same problems needed for other important technologies: grid computing, n-tiered applications, clusters and redundant hardwares, IPv6, mobile/roaming networks... With the new (basic) support for UPnP in LimeWire, we can adapt to those situations, but this will come progressively, because of the lack of a significant deployed platform to reproduce and experiment the problems and implement possible solutions.

So my response will be that Java 1.5 is recommanded now for most users, but if this fails for some of you, get back to Java 1.4 and check your hardware and OS components. LimeWire cannot be made to guarantee that it will work on all platform configurations and for all users, but LimeWire can be made to work with new standards. Java 1.5 is one of these new standards that is working so well for many.

i still have some connection problems, it says that its connecting..but it never connects. Can anyone please tell me what the problem is? thanks

cant connect
 

Hi, iv just got limewire and the first time everything was fine , then after switching off my computer and coming back, it just stays on the connecting sign showing red bars,
im on windows xp
and have panda protection,
iv done everything said in the help guide to get past the xp and panda firewall. but it seems od that it would let me use it the first time and not the next, maybe its some thing simple, please help as iv been here flipin hours.

thanx starv.

I have the same problem
 

I'm having the same problem here. The first couple days it worked great but now i can't get a connection. It's always says connecting- waiting for a stable connection. Forgive me i'm new to all this. I have dial up. No firewalls. If anyone can help i would appreciate it.