Guess what silky. I found the lost files. They were in the documents folder under shared. Thank you very much for all your hope. I hope I can get help like yours everyday. I'll look to you if I have anymore troubles with Limewire. Thank you.

Apparently - opening windows media player was what we had in common...

Apparently by default, It takes over the settings of what it considers 3rd party players.

I am Glad you found your files!

Have a Super Day!!!

silky

Where should my shared files be? I have 180 but it shows 250 when I have the library at default (system folder) and 35 when I have it at applications(macos9)limewire. I'm worried about security and also that people can't upload. Oh how I miss n......!

I absolutely do not in any way claim to be an expert in this area and your problem sounds a little bit different... Actually your question is along the same lines... and I'll try.

It would help to know what your operating system is... and whether or not you are using another program - either real player or Windows media player to also listen to or record or play music.

But most importantly, the First thing you need to do is make sure using the tools/options of Limewire that you are not sharing anything except ..............Either a shared folder, or a My music folder.... Of course this is assuming you are here for MP3... you may be doing something else.

The point is, you need to be only sharing what you want to be sharing, and which folder this is depends on your operating system and your personal configurations, if you are on a network and so forth....

If you do not have a firewall in place, it may be safest to Uninstall/reinstall limewire and be very careful when doing the set up ..... Well.... I need to take my cat to the vet. I will be back. If you see this, tell me what your operating system is and I will also try to get a copy of the letter that I sent neobird...

be back in a couple hours

silky

Weel I have Windows XP Professional and I'm going to be using it for windows media player.

Rather than totally confuse you when your situation might be different, I had better just explain what happened to me and to neo bird and why I think it did.

First of all, here is a letter I wrote to him during the research of my problem and it also caused him to find his missing files

Begin copy: When you have limewire open.... click on tools/options and look at the tab that says, automatically put saved files into this folder....

When we downloaded the product, by default, it sent them into the "shared" folder that limewire provides...

But if you so much as click on Windows media player , ( and probably other proprietary music programs too) It can take this over and change it to something similar to the following

This was the case for me because I have Windows XP Pro .. but might be different for you...... C:\Documents and settings\username\shared

Yours might be C:\My documents my music....

The way I found my "disappearing songs" was this way: After I downloaded one and watched it completely so that I knew it had "finished"..... (and of course the number being shared did not grow by one..)

I remembered the artist and title of the song. ( It's better if you download a song that has a wierd name, maybe)

anyway.. then I closed up limewire... restarted my computer...

Then went to the windows Find feature.... In XP it is now called search.. In 98/ 98SE you would go start/find/ files and folder... bla bla

anyway... I entered the title of the song I had just downloaded..... - Exactly like it was titled -

and voila..... It found it .. in the above mentioned path in my computer.

So I navigated to that folder in windows explorer and guess what..... All of the rest of the missing songs were in there too.

Try this...... Let me know what happens in your case...
End of copy and paste:

Since that time I have done some more research. I can’t speak for any other programs, but in my case, in Windows XP pro, Windows Media Player, ( and this should be illegal) has the power to permanently change the settings of other 3rd party applications.

I had read about this in an XP manual, and read that it was one of the prices that we pay for the stability of XP. In order to make XP more stabile than past Operating systems, (The end of .dll hell) Can you remember when we would download a new program or application and there would be a conflict and our computer would freeze? Well XP is much for stabile because it does not allow these “conflicts” to happen. In preventing them, somehow, Windows overrides the settings of some 3rd party applications. I am not nearly techy enough to know How it does it nor how to prevent it. I am almost afraid of attempting to do so.

I did attempt to try to reset the default folder for “items to be shared in limewire” back to the original folder which limewire had used by default. Because limewire was new and I had no clue this would ever happen, I neglected to even look up, much less write down that exact path name.

Since some songs are “complete” and some are not, It cant be C:\program files\limewire\ shared… because if you use that, the incompletes would go in there…. And you can’t use C:\program files\incomplete… because the “completed items” would go to the incomplete folder.

I asked for the path from gnutella forums but no one answered me. So I tried to change it to C:\programs\limewire to see what happened.

What happened is that Limewire “broke” and gave me a big error message and would not open for me.

At that point, in frustration and also because my firewall was getting a lot of strange hits, and because I was worried about what all is really being shared, I reluctantly eliminated limewire (and all limeshop components) from my system and downloaded WinMX. Which works okay ( you can’t search by Genre) but the point is --- I liked limewire, despite it’s current bugs and I hated that I had to do that.

I want to be able to have and use limewire. I am given to understand this latest version is buggy but they are recommending using an older version until they come out with a fix for the bugs.

I know that if this thread, and especially this post, could be brought to the attention of the people that make Limewire --- They could tell us exactly how we need to have our settings in Limewire and Windows Media player library.. in order that they can co-exist happily and the wrong files are not shared as well.

In my case, I opened up Windows media player for the first time, “after I had downloaded limewire”. So in setting it up, I may have brought on this mess. This was also the case for neo bird, I believe.

It may very well be that if you have Windows media player set up first, and “then” install Limewire (using defaults) , there would not be a problem. You could just go into your “windows media player” and add one folder to the folders that the library monitors for new songs…

You would do this by choosing/ tools/ options/ media library/ then click “monitor folders” and add the following folder.

C:\program files\limewire\shared. In this way, you would get the benefit of having all your complete songs in the library (not incompletes) and ---- hopefully --- all the songs downloaded with limewire would stay in limewire to be shared with others.

I don’t know if that will work. I think it might. I am tempted to try this next. …but I really don’t want the limeshop stuff and am hesitant to fork out the $9 until I know that they do get their bugs worked out.

If anyone else who is having this problem, tries this and it works or even doesn’t, please let me know.

And FOR GODS SAKES IF SOMEONE WHO IS TECHNICALLY SKILLED ( such as the makers? ) WITH THE LIMEWIRE PROGRAM SEES THIS,,,,,,, please come help and tell us what to do.

Windows media player, despite the fact that it belongs to you know who, allows us to organize “all” our music in ways as to create great playlists and CD’s. It would be really nice if limewire and it could happily coexist on the same computer with no worries about the wrong files being shared. Such as private ones.

At this point I doubt in anyone has read down this far, If you have, I salute you. Once I get my finger in a problem I just can’t seem to let it go. So I will keep watching the thread in the hopes that a magic solution may appear because I do like both the concept of limewire, and limewire itself. If these problems could be overcome. I would happily support and pay for the program.

silky

Hi Silky: You seem to be quite knowledgeable. My operating system is MAC 9.2.2. I'm so afraid people can get into my hard drive. Most of my tunes are in mp3; others in iTunes. Well, if only 35 files are shared, so be it I suppose. Thanks so much for helping. I miss Napster so much. I'm on the verge of giving up with Limewire.
Hope the cat is all right...

I changed to library to /software/limewire and now there are 75 realplayer shared files. That's better than 35. The others are in the hard drive with iTunes. go figure... Meantime, I haven't had ANY response from Limewire administrators regarding the 'bug' message I got. I'm on my way to HMV to buy CD's - a lot less aggro than LIMEWIRE - I THINK THIS SYSTEM IS MORE LIKE A LEMON THAN A LIME...

Well thank you.... but I may be full of beans. I 've been hoping some moderator will come along and correct any thing I have said wrong.

I just sent them a letter with a link to my big post, and the thread itself...

but I got an automated reply saying that since I am using free version and the volume of mail they get, that I will probably not receive a personal response ... bla bla..

You have a mac... I truly don't know, ( I wish I did) anything about mac. I was raised a window lemming..

For your safety, If you will be using limewire again to get that "special" song or 2 or 9....

Make sure you know what folder or folders are being shared in limewire and that you do not have personal data in them or in a subfolder of them.
If your limewire has been taken over by Windows media player, (or another proprietary application) this may not be the same folder your songs are downloading to...

Nor may it be the same folder that you specified during set up... So make sure specify which folder for sharing. And go back and double check from time to time in case another music program tries to take over and change it.

With you having a Mac, I am given to understand that you are safer than Windows folks, Most predators target windows vulnerabilities.

My McAree firewall showed some strange looking attempts that apparently did make it through my (router firewall) probably because a connection was open for the file sharing but anyway this did worry me.

I am wandering off subject.. This thread is about "completed downloads suddenly being sent to a totally different folder than they had been when limewire was installed. and I am still.... crossing my fingers that someone will come along and help.

silky

I kept thinking about what " patnb2002" said about being afraid of his hard drive being exposed.

So I decided to go into my firewall event log and compare the hits its getting now that I have been using WinMX instead of Limewire.

As I said earlier, in Limewire, I was getting some nasties that were being caught by McAfee, even after bypassing or working around my linksys routher hardware firewall. I also said maybe that was due to the fact that we "are" file sharing. I know little about ports and so forth..

I was WRONG. From the moment I Uninstalled limewire up to now... ( which includes installing winMX and using it to both upload and download many songs successfully) I have received NO MORE HITS THAT BYPASSED MY HARDWARE FIREWALL.

In other words, something in limewire was able to bypass my router hardware firewall and try to get in. Without the second firewall McAfee- they would have succeeded.

Using WinMX ( I have not tried any others....and I don't promote Win MX ... I don't even like it that much because you can't search by Genre) but Using WinMX.... There were zero such attempts.

Now maybe what limewire was doing was a result of "the pushing" thing that limewire does. or maybe not.

I am not taking any chances. No more limewire... I may check em out again in a year or so.... see if they have become more secure...because I did like the concept but not at the expense of my security.

silky