Hi - I just downloaded limewire pro and am having the following problems - if anyone can help me out that would be great!

(I use a powerbook g4 MAC OSX)

1. Everytime I run limewire there is a strange low buzzing kind of purr of a noise that I have never heard with any other program. It's kind of annoying and makes me wonder if there is something wrong with this program...

2. About 90% of the music I try to download says 'cannot download'. I read the FAQ's but I still don't understand why this should be happening so much.

3. nothing happens when I click on CHAT

4. Last question, i promise - (I am also a new MAC user) what is the difference between a sit file and a dmg file?

If anyone can help me out with any of the above, THANKS!

Limewire should not cause your machine to make any unusual noises. If this noise is unique to Limewire (ie it occurs when Limewire is the only application running and at no other time) then something unusual is happening and I would advise you to uninstall and delete everything with "Limew" in the label and then download another copy of the Limewire package. Let me know if that fails to solve the problem and I'll suggest another line of attack.

Gnutella is full of people who either cannot share or make sharing difficult by reducing their bandwidth allocation to the uploading function or the number of upload slots. If you are getting a 10% hit rate, that is very good. I average 5%. You have to be nimble. If there is no response on two requests from a given host, abandon it and move on the the next until you find a live connection.

Chat comes and goes. In theory it works when you have chat enabled in Preferences and you attempt to make contact to those showing the yellow face. It has never worked for me to send although I can receive messages. It is no big loss. The key virtue of Gnutella is the sharing of material. If you want to chat use ICQ, Jabber or one of the other dedicated packages.

A .sit file is a Stuffit file — a compressed document which is not limited as to content and may be unpacked for use on either a Mac or a PC. A .dmg file is one of the formats resulting from the unpacking process and indicates readiness to install.

Regarding your buzzing sound--I know this is probably a long shot but perhaps it's a cooling fan coming on or something? Limewire X is quite CPU intensive--much more so than your normal web browser or email program, especially if you are configured to be an ultrapeer, are downloading many files, and/or are performing many searches. In theory, this could be causing your laptop to heat up much more than it normally does while using other programs, hence the cooling fan coming on.

A ".sit" file, as David91 said, is a stuffit archive file, very similar to ".zip" or ".rar" files on a PC. A .sit file can contain a single file or multiple files.

A ".dmg" file is an OS X Disk Copy disk image file. This is a single file that when double-clicked will be opened by Disk Copy and "mounted" on your desktop. The disk that is mounted is like most other disks in that you can explore it and store files on it, and depending on the type of image, read or write files to it. Most .dmg's you'll come across are read-only images and are meant only for you to copy files off of and not onto. Once you are "done" with the disk, select it in the Finder and hit Command+E to "eject" the ("virtual") disk.

".img" files are OS 9 disk image files that are basically the same as OS X .dmg files except that they can be used in both OS 9 and OS X.

Hope this helps....

Thanks so much for your replies.

The buzzing sound is not the fan, although that would make sense.
I actually paid for this version of limewire pro- can I delete and download again without paying for it twice?

It is a bit disapointing that that success rate on downloading is normal - That said, being new to this I am amazed at how much music etc is out there to download, and the quality of the songs that I have downloaded has been good. Are there any downsides to downloading programs? It seems to good to be true - For example - just did a search on a mac program ......- is it really possible this can be downloaded for free?! And the files are all different sizes, how do I know what that means? Is there any way of getting more info about something before downloading it - I guess this is what chat is for, (when/if it works)? Or is it better limewire etiquette to not ask annoying questions and just take your chances...

Anyway, thanks for explaining the files as well - starting to make sense of this!

Limewire is a shareware project so making any payment is at your discretion and demonstrates your wish to support the work of people who want to produce a good product without the flaws induced by the large corporations. So you can download another copy without paying.

Without getting technical, a large number of those who access Gnutella are not very sociable and do not share. Hence, a large proportion of the hits that show up in your search window will not download to you. Further, because people do not leave their computers on for very long, the topography of connections between all the machines is in permanent flux, so you will often find that your link to a host downloading to you will be disrupted and you have to reconnect by killing the download and restarting it from the original source in the search box.

Yes, there are many media available for sharing but, on a public forum like this, it is an indiscretion to mention an interest in particular copyright protected materials. As to different file sizes, avoid the small files. They tend to be the spoofs. With a little research, you should be able to find out roughly how big the files should be for the materials you are interested in. Remember that most of the world has PCs not Macs if you do decide to search for software and that not everyone makes the complete package available including the code for installation.

There is no etiquette on Gnutella. Everyone brings their own morality and "common sense" to bear. Remember that you cannot use chat until you achieve a live connection and, even if you had a working version, many cable and DSL users leave LW on in the background and do not have pop-ups to warn them of messages. So, even if you could ask, you end up taking a chance.

Good to see you're having fun.

David