Sorry, there was a problem downloading your file
 

There are other threads with this title - sorry if I'm duplicating but they don't seem to cover my circumstances.

Vista 6.0, service pack 2
Limewire vn 5.1.4

I rebooted the PC and got the message when restarting Limewire. This was a torrent that I had been downloading, and I've rebooted several times (it's a large download) without any problems. But now I can’t resume. When I restarted there were no downloads that started – before any uncompleted ones would restart automatically. I wondered if the torrent might be corrupted, because when I downloaded it a second time the file size changed, but I get the message when opening the new torrent also.

I have tried changing the save location, deleting the preferences folder and opening as administrator - all suggested in other threads. None work.

Grateful for any advice.

M

I've heard of this issue before & it applied to Torrents. LW is not the best torrent program out there (there's better such as uTorrent & Vuse.) And some torrent sites block LW as a torrent program from connecting with their links.

The torrent came from Demonoid, which I use frequently. I checked before my first posting in the thread by downloading another torrent at random, which worked fine. It's 86gb of files and I'm a little over half way through, so I don't want to lose them and have to start again.

M

I've been away for several days, and this thread seems to have gone quiet. Does anyone have any suggestions please?

M

Try reopening the torrent with LW. Another option is to redownload the torrent file from that site & open that with LW.

Sorry - did both before. I have the files in the Incomplete folder but I can't progress any further.

M

Are there many seeds/peers for the files you want? Seems to me that 86GB is way too large a file to try to dl as one torrent. I have found it much faster to dl such content as multiple files (i.e., instead of 12 one-hour episodes in one file, I would dl 12 files that each contain one episode).

Seems to me this is one of the areas LW lets users down with torrents.
With some other 'torrent only' programs such as uTorrent & Vuse, it is easy as pie to restart torrents if something goes wrong with the computer that mucks up the downloading. Question is what the exact problem is. You could arguably try using either of those programs mentioned & open the torrent up with them to see if they recognise the previous download % & continue the torrent. LW 5 unfortunately does not have resume functions, once a download vanishes from the download window for whatever reason you cannot restart it usually. For gnutella network files you can go back to LW 4, resume the incomplete downloads then revert back to LW 5, but I do not know if this would work with torrents.

Are the incomplete torrent files showing up in the Download window at all? If yes, I wonder if someone 'kick & banned' you for downloading using LW.

By 'kick & banned' you for downloading using LW I take it you mean that my broadband provider or somebody is taking action against me. That is not happening - just a few minutes ago I downloaded another torrent chosen at random and it worked. I have reverted to LW 4.1.18 and installed utorrent and Vuze, but nothing seems to work - they all have their own error message.

In answer to other points, the number of peers varied but was normally about 50. The speed also varied, but when it stopped it was due to finish in about six days, having got through about 52gb out of 86gb. It was by far the largest torrent I have ever used, but it worked fine for nearly a fortnight.

The problem seem to be limited to one torrent only. Am I allowed to name the torrent on this forum? There are two similar ones, both giving the same size of download, and neither of them work on any program, even though one previously worked fine for a time.

M

Cannot name the file if it is a copyright file, no.
Sounds like a dud file perhaps. Perhaps google the issue see if anybody else has reported issues with that torrent.

By kick & ban, I meant another user using a different torrent program. However, torrent sites can ban particular torrent programs. Private torrent sites usually only allow a particular limited list of torrent programs to use.

oh .. did you try redownloading the torrent file? Something that sometimes happens is the original Tracker URL ID code gets changed. I know how to change this in Vuse, do not have a clue how you would change it in LW. Perhaps opening a new copy of the torrent file might fix it.

For Vuse, you open the freshly downloaded torrent file. Then Right-click it, choose Advanced -> Tracker/Torrent -> Edit Tracker URL(s), then Right-click on he URL in the list & choose Edit & copy the new URL. Edit the old torrent but paste in the new URL. I achieve this by opening the torrent file on windows & copy the details across to my mac (same computer) or to Transmission (another torrent program.)

What happens when you add the torrent to Vuze? Does it show the percentage done and if not, have you tried force checking the torrent?

If it says 0% done, are you sure you are pointing it to Limewire's primary torrent folder, where the already downloaded data for the torrent is located?

BTW if Vuze says "Error: Path\XXXXX.XXX file is corrupt" X being some file in whatever torrent you are downloading, just delete that particular file and try force checking again.

If none of the above, what does the error say? (without specific file names)

Sorry for the delay in replying - I've been out of the country.

I can't remember what the Vuze error message was, and I'd rather not find out just yet - LW does seem to be a little flaky and in the last day or so I've crashed it by running Dosbox (maybe to be expected) and then VLC Media Player (maybe not to be expected). I don't want to load any software that I don't have to right now. What I can remember is that it refused to load the torrent.

What I did was to search for the torrent on other sites. The size may give a hint as to what it was. I found another that seems to have no seeds for the first day, and then a third that is working. So far I'm about 30% through and due to finish in about 14 days.

Moving on, what is the reason for avoiding large downloads? Is it solely the risk of data loss?

M

I have no idea. I don't avoid them.. but then again I only use real torrent programs for torrents ;)

Huge files generally have fewer seeds/peers. You can end up with milti-GB files sitting on your drive for a long time while awaiting the last few MBs. I have a 5-GB file that I have waited months to complete. And if the files are archived, you may not be able to tell if you got a good copy until the download is complete. Would it not suck to find out, 14 days from now, that your file is mis-named, poorly ripped, or spam?

Well if you manage to find multi-GB files (as in larger than 1080p or alternatively Bluray) in one single archive, then let me know where, because I would love to see a +40GB torrent with one single multirar archive.

Unless I'm quite sure of the quality beforehand, I always download 1 working file first. Also you can check comments below most links, or just stick to what you know is legit.

On a public torrent, there is always a chance of all seeders leaving, but it's a risk you choose to take. And 5GB really isn't that much bandwidth.

Out of the thousands of torrents I've downloaded over the years, no matter the size, very few have not completed.. unless they were a longshot from the start, like 2 seeds and 0-10 leechers with speeds of a few KB/s a second. Even fever have been mislabeled or useless.

Just to let you all know: the download has finished. 86.05gb in a little under 22 days. I still have no idea why the first stopped, nor why the second, which has downloaded the same set of files, worked. But thanks for all the suggestions.

M