Limewire is "unable to load old downloads"

[lionelj]

Hi Folks,

I'm a forum newbie, been using Limewire for ages. I upgraded to 4.10.9 a couple of months ago, and in the last week or so I get the following message on starting Limewire:

"Limewire is unable to load old downloads"

After this message, my download list is empty (even though the previous session of Limewire had many files in the download list). All the files that were previously in the download list (and are unfinished) are shown in the "Incomplete Files" folder in the "Library".

I can "resume" files from the "Incomplete Files" folder in the "Library", but the resumed files start off at 0% (even though 99% of the file might have been downloaded previously) and the resumed files often just sit there and never actually resume.

So, has anyone else had this problem of Limewire not picking up unfinished downloads when Limewire starts up?
If so, please help...

Thanks!

LionelJ

[stief]

Hi Lionel

Since nothing else changed, it looks like your old downloads.dat and downloads.bak files have become corrupted. Without those indexes stored in the bak and dat files, incompletes cannot be successfully resumed or completed.

This has happened to me before after a java memory crash.

Nothing has been developed (though there has been some discussion of a theoretical way to reconstruct an incomplete file) that will fix this, so the only sad workaround is to delete the whole incomplete folder, and a new one will be re-created with fresh downloads.dat and .bak files on startup.

Maybe in the future someone will find a practical way to revitalize incomplete files withouut a .dat and .bak file, so maybe archive the old incomplete folder just inn case.

[lionelj]

Thanks Stief,

This has happened to me several times lately, so it's kinda making it impossible to download files unless the file starts and finishes downloading within the same Limewire session.

Is there a difference between the downloads.dat and downloads.bak files... is the .bak file simply a backup copy of the .dat file?

If I regularly manually create a copy of the downloads.dat file, can I use my copy to replace a corrupted file?

Thanks!

LionelJ

[stief]

The .bak is indeed a backup of the dat, and someone wrote a scripts to automatically backup the backup (just search these forums for the link).

I can't remember the details exactly, but the person who wrote the script had problems like yours too.

However, it sounds like a clean incomplete folder is still a good idea.

[Lord of the Rings]

Downlds refuse to reload (click on link)

If you're using Mac OSX then there is indeed a backup program you can use for your downld prefs. You'll find it listed here http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showthread.php?t=36377 But this is ONLY for mac osx & it seems to work. I've tested it.

[xena400]

I'm having a similar problem except for me it's a little different.

Just yesterday I had to reinstall windows on my computer and reinstalled limewire.

After limewire made it's own incomplete folder after I installed it, I over wrote the incomplete folder with the Incomplete folder that I had written on a DVD for a backup copy (With my other files of course) that way I could start where I left off without having to do a search (If I could remember all the files that I had on the list to begin with) on all the files that I had before.

I just now overwrote the incomplete folder with the one that I had backed up and for some reason even though it's the same exact file (But with different titles written in the .bak file itself) that that it already had when limewire made its own incomplete folder, it won't load up the backup that I had for the .bak file.

I'm getting the same result that "Limewire can't load up the old downloads" yet when I put in the new .bak file with brand new downloads that I experimented with, it loads those up fine but not my backup file that I had on a DVD.

Any suggestions would help.
Russell

Originally Posted by stief

The .bak is indeed a backup of the dat, and someone wrote a scripts to automatically backup the backup (just search these forums for the link).

I can't remember the details exactly, but the person who wrote the script had problems like yours too.

However, it sounds like a clean incomplete folder is still a good idea.