I have gotten this message several times now when starting/restarting LW.
Is there a way to "reactivate" the old downlods to load up or do I have to start from scratch all over again?
And is there a reason this happens? How to keep it from happening again? (I use XP Home and the free LW version.)
Very frustrating!!!!!!!

What is the message you're getting? and from what application?

the message is exactly as stated...can't load old downloads. and it has happened 3 times now when logging on LimeWire.

This is not something I've come across before.
Are these complete or incomplete files?

It doesn't sound good to be happening frequently. It happened to me when I jumped back to an earlier version. I don't suppose you have more than one version of LW on your comp. Which version of LW are you using?

Some preventative measures:

1. Update your Java: Java 1.4.2 (click on link)

2. Make sure any firewalls you have are configured to allow both LW & Java access. Here's instructions for some of the most common firewalls: http://www.limewire.com/english/content/firewalls.shtml

3. Get the newest version of LW: http://www.limewire.com/english/content/download.shtml

4. Don't use the Resume button on too many files. In fact I don't recommend using it on more than a few per session.

5. After opening LW allow LW to settle down before doing anything with it such as searching or using the media player.

6. Here's some hints on optimising LW: A well set-up LW can start to automatically continue its dwnlding after it's settled down perhaps 2 out of 3 times you open LW. Optimising LW & Maximising Uplds & Dwnlds A (1st post only) & also Part B which is even better & last & least are search & dwnld hints. The latter one I've been thinking about re-writing for some time. That's just for playing it safe. eg- I show all speeds & qualities.

7. Don't touch the files in the LW incomplete folder whilst LW is not open!!! If you add or delete any files to the incomplete folder it may very well corrupt LW's dwnld preferences. Stay away from it. If you want to delete files from that folder you can do it from the LW Library window & selecting the incomplete folder & having a very, very careful look at any files you want to delete. BUT I warn you to be very wary of doing this b/c once they're deleted they are gone for good. You can't get them back. So ONLY do this IF you are 100% sure you want to & have selected the correct folder & the correct file. No room for mistakes.


Present situation: You can try to resume your files from the LW Library window & selecting the incomplete folder but in most cases doing this will result in them starting from zero%. Better is to do a search using LW for sources for them & re-selecting them to dwnld & seeing if they will continue from where they were. No guarantees this will work but better than using the ominous Resume function in the LW Library window.

I'm writinting because i experienced today a similar problem than "scottnsf".
I red with interest the answer from Lord of the Rings but unfortunately it didn't help.

First I have to say I'm using Limewire for 1 year now and it works perfectly well. I use it with a powerbook G4 1,25 Ghz/512MB ; under mac OSX 10.2.8 and I recently upgrade to Limewire pro 4.2.6

So I had a pretty bad surprise today :

I started Limewire as usually by clicking on its icon, but then it happened that it didn't start normally as allways, but it started like if I was instaling it for the first time. (I have absolutly no idea why, i just erased the LW installer(disc image), but didn't touch anything from the application folder) So the thing is that it restarted all from zero and with default settings, so with the downloads and incomplete files in HD>user>home. In fact I used to have them on the desktop, so I went in preferences to restaure this setting, I stopped and restarted Limewire. Then, on the contrary of "scottnsf", i didn't get any message, but in fact Limewire still does'nt recognize my incomplete files (they appear in library, but not in downloads) This is pretty annoying considering the fact that there were quite a few big & rare files that were loading for a while...

I tried searching manually for the same files, even found exactly the same ones (same name; size; id number), clicked load to see but even though it does'nt create an another file in the incomplete folder, it does start from 0% all over again...

I guess it has something to do with .dat files in the incomplete folder, but well, I'm a bit desesperate about it...
Any help would be great
thanks

That's very strange, Rom. Had you been succesfully using 4.2.6 before it asked you to re-enter your settings and lost your downloads? When was the last time you used LimeWire succesfully before this happened today?

The problem with losing your download is probably a consequence of LimeWire losing track of your settings. You should redo your settings so that you have the same 'Save Directory' as you did before, and that will cause LimeWire to reuse the old incomplete directory also. Actually -- one small catch with that is that you'll want to copy and save the 'downloads.dat' file from the incomplete directory before tell LimeWire what the save directory should be. The reason is that when LimeWire closes after you set the new directory, it will overwrite the existing downloads.dat. So...

1) Copy downloads.dat somewhere safe.
2) Tell LimeWire where the old save directory was at.
3) Shutdown LimeWire
4) Put the copied downloads.dat back in the incomplete folder.
5) Start up LimeWire

That _should_ get LimeWire using your old incomplete files again.

I agree that none of this should be necessary. It's very strange that LimeWire lost track of your preferences. Had you done any other system upgrade, or did you perhaps change users on OSX?

Hi, thanks for your reply sberlin

To answer your questions, yes I was using succesfully Limewire 4.2.6 before that happened, just before in the day it was working good. But Here there's something I forgot to mention that might be important: so Limewire was running, but suddendly I ran out of memory space, so I had a message like "Limewire can't save downloads anymore, no more space found on the computer(...)". I clicked ok on this message, wich was repeated 4 times. Then I shut down Limewire. Then I made some space on my hard drive (a few gigas), then I launched Limewire again, and then it reinstalled itself like I was saying in previous message.
Seeing it was not recognizing past downloads, I changed the settings to have the same 'Save Directory' as I had before, I shut down and restart Limewire but the same problem was remaining.

If I understand what you say about .dat files, it's too late to do something with that : I stopped & restart Limewire a few times since it was working ok, so I guess .dat files have already been overwriten.

Thanks again for helpin'

The idea of backing up my download.dat file reminds me of my LW2 days (I only updated from there 7 mths ago.) LW2 often (well, every few mths or so) suffered corruption to the dwnld prefs. But certainly LW 4 doesn't normally suffer that issue.

There apparently is an issue with Java & LW mounting up too much ram use & virtual memory space for OSX (memory stored on the HDD.)

Since you only have 500 or so MB RAM, I would highly recommend that you undertake techniques to minimise that ram use. For a start, close all windows except the search window. When you're not in front of the computer, hide LW in the dock. When you have search results that are longer than a few hrs old, delete them. Go to LW's Prefs & set your Dwnlds for auto-clear: LW's Prefs>Downloads>Auto-clear Completed dwnlds & then press the APPLY button.

Attached Images

auto-clear-dwnlds.gif (24.6 KB, 218 views)