Limewire Crashes My Internet
 

Hi,

I am on XP and using a Belkin modem router. I've just installed Limewire and its working fine. However, when I am using Limewire I can't use the internet, in fact my other computer on the LAN is having the same problem when one of us is using Limewire. My web pages come up with "Page Cannot Be Displayed" and I can't check my e-mails on outlook express because an error comes up.

At first I thought it was a firewall issue but I have opened ports / forwarded ports etc. Then I thought it was bandwidth problems but on limewire I have taken my Download Bandwidth to 16kb/s but my internet still freezes and crashes.

Any ideas?

Many thanks

JC

Make sure you're using at least Java 1.5
You can find out by going to LW's menu bar, Help menu > About LW & it will show both the LW version & the Java version.

Also reduce your upload speed to about 80%.
Go to Tools>Options>Speed & disable Ultrapeer capabilities.
Go to Tools>Options>iTunes & disable all iTunes options.

When you open LW, let it settle before doing anything. Wait at least 10 mins so your shared files have loaded properly, & your incompletes have both loaded & attempted to connect on their own. Then use the search function, etc. If you use the Resume/Find Sources function, don't apply it to all files at once! Only apply it to 2-3 files at one time. Otherwise that can have side effects such as use up too much resources for LW, your computer & modem.

Also, if you have an ethernet card, use that rather than use a USB connection to your Belkin. USB tends to draw both power & CPU from the computer & doesn't handle high/heavy traffic very well.

If you have over 1,000 incomplete files, then consider this: Tip: Purge the Downloads Queue! & apply it to those files with 0% downlded.