Is it possible to have interrupted downloads automatically restart?
 

I'm running LW 4.0.5 on a (please don't laugh) P2-350 with Windows 98, 128MB RAM, cable internet connection. I've had LW since about version 1.7 and I really like it. But it seems that recently, a feature I need badly has disappeared.

Windows 98 crashes frequently, so I have a lot of unfinished downloads. It used to be that when this happened, if I rebooted and restarted LW right away, my half-done download would pick up right in the middle, where it left off. That doesn't happen any more. It's pretty frustrating to spend fourteen hours downloading a 300MB episode of *** *****, watch the completion meter get up to 85%, and then have the system crash. When I log back on and LW looks for old downloads, it always, and I mean ALWAYS, says "Need more sources" for every interrupted download. When I do the same search I did before to find the file, the file is right there, and when I click on it (the exact same file from the exact same source), it has no trouble starting to download again - only it starts at 0% again.

Is there an option somewhere that I have to set? I've looked through all the options and can't find anything governing automatic restarts. I'm configured for up to eight simlutaneous downloads, and I've lowered the bandwidth for uploads almost as low as it will go, so there should be lots of slots and bandwidth available for downloads.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help.

Please delete your reference to the item you'e dwnlding! This is not a wares site for legal reasons.

LW does not have auto starts. However, a good connection & patience & I find they generally start up again anyway by themselves (w/o need for searching for sources.) One thing you can do is to press Resume (1) in the dwnld window. This will make the file search out for sources every 5 mins/so for a certain period. If it can't find any it gives up. I rarely use this. It drains the connection energy. In the LW Lib window incomplete files can be forced to resume (2). However I would warn against using this unless absolutely necessary. Forcing it to resume here has a history of forgetting its dwnld history & starting at 0%. The earlier versions of LW had a type of auto-search function similar to the resume (1) function. LW took it out b/c it was starting to clog up the gnutella network with traffic. Imagine if somebody has 1k of files dwnlding & LW sent out searches for all of them. Then multiply that by the no. of LW users & you end up with a conjested network that becomes slow even for companies & other users.

It sounds to me that your download.dat/.bak file(s) is becoming corrupted when your comp crashes. This was moreso an issue in the earlier versions of LW.

By the way, if you're using cable, lowering the upld bandwidth won't affect your dwnld bandwidth in any way. If fact, by lowering your upld options, you may be lowering your chance to connect to more peers thus for better connections & better search results.

May I recommend you make sure you have the most up to date version of Java for Win98. Your ram is a bit low I must say for today's apps. This could well be the cause of the crashing. I'd suggest you don't use many/any other apps at same time as LW.

Here's a few tips: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...threadid=27036
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...5&pagenumber=1
Search techniques

Thank you, LOTR! The links to the other posts was a great help. I'll try wiping out my downloads.txt and downloads.bak, and I'll pump up the uploads a bit, and I'll be a bit more patient upon restarting LW to see if they start up on their own again.

And yeah, I know the RAM's pretty low and the operating system is the scum of the universe ... it was really good when I bought the computer, but that was a long time ago. I'd love to have a new PC with all the bells and whistles, but I'd have to use a couple month's mortgage payments to do it ... I'd have a great computer and no house!