LW 5 users only need to Cancel their downloads which are zero %. LW 5 automatically deletes the incomplete file when you cancel the download.

For LW 4 see below & link below for post #15)

(Edit: See post #15 for sample image, some things changed in later LW 4 versions.)



What to do when Limewire has slowed to a crawl?

The tips in this forum for using LimeWire most efficiently are tops. I have one of my own to share too.

Sometimes, despite you doing everything right, LimeWire is still stuck in the mud. You may be waiting minutes before it responds to a click. There is one last thing still to do: purge LimeWire's downloads queue. This has worked great every time for me.

You may have too many downloads queued. To check, open LimeWire's "Incomplete" folder in the Finder and see what it says at the bottom of the window. How many items are there in it? If it says "5,000 items", you need to lose some.

What to do about it? If LimeWire is not running, launch it and wait for it to settle down before going on. Have a sleep or go for a drive. Give it as much time as you can and then go to the Downloads window in LimeWire.

Double-click on the heading "Progress" at the top of that column. Wait patiently while LimeWire sorts the queued downloads, with those nearest completion first. Be prepared to wait just as patiently for each of the other stages in this process. It is worth it in the end.

When the word "Progress" has an arrow next to it pointing down, you are ready to go on. Note the name of a file that is queued for download towards the top of the window. Click once in the middle of the vertical scroll bar to the right of LimeWire's Downloads window. Wait for the name of a new download to appear at the top of the window. Click the vertical scroll bar again and repeat the process. Keep doing this until you can see a download with a value in the "Progress" column of zero%.

Click once on the name of the first download that has a progress of zero%. Wait for it to be highlighted. Click on the slider of the vertical scroll bar to the right, keeping the mouse button held down. Wait for a minute like that, then, without releasing the mouse button, drag the slider all the way down to the bottom of the window and let go. Wait for the slider on-screen to follow your movement.

Hold the shift key down and click once on the name of the last download. This tells LimeWire to select all the downloads between the first one that was zero% and the last one. Let go of the shift key. Wait for all the downloads you can see in the window to be highlighted. Click the red stop sign at the bottom of the Downloads window. This will purge all those selected downloads. After a few seconds, you will be astonished to see LimeWire come alive again, just like when it was new.

Go back to LimeWire's "Incomplete" folder. Press command-2 to get a list view of that window. Press command-J for "Get info". Make sure there is a tick (check) next to "Size". Close the "Get info" window. In the "Incomplete" window, click once on the word "Size" at the head of its column. All the partial files in LimeWire's "Incomplete" folder are now sorted by size.

Scroll until you can see the first partial file with a size of zero. Click once on it. Scroll more to the very end of the window. Hold the shift key down and click once on the last file with a size of zero. Press command-delete to move all those files of zero size to the trash. You have already told LimeWire to ignore those files from now on when you purged its download queue. Now you are removing the records of them from your hard disk too. This will let the computer cope with a lean and mean "Incomplete" folder. Empty the trash.

What have you done? The files you have trashed were of two kinds:
- things you had been trying to download but which you would never get because the computer that had them was not configured correctly to give them to you, and
- things you might have got eventually but have failed to all this time.

LimeWire was spending all its energy trying again and again at too many things that just weren't happening.

You can still try again in future. When you do a search, each of those downloads you aborted will show a white square icon with a diagonal rip through it. By all means, try again. Now you might succeed.

How does your Downloads queue get into such a state? If the files you like are small, it is easy to lose track of how many you have queued. For example, my special thing is picture files of average 100 KB or smaller. Of course, none of us waits for each one to finish downloading before trying for others. We queue what we can and go to bed with the prospect of seeing what goodies LimeWire has left for us in the morning. We just need to keep an eye on how much we have loaded LimeWire up with.

Materials Used:
LimeWire 4.3.0b Pro
Mac OS 10.3.7
Mac G4 400 MHz
896 MB SDRAM
Netgear 834 modem-router
ADSL 256/64