I woke up this morning to find all of my "incompletes" had turned red. What a bummer!!!!!!

Of course, when I attempted to resume the downloads of these partially downloaded files, I lost several weeks of work since they all resumed at zero instead of 50 to 99 percent. What a bummer!!!!!!

It's not the first time it's happened. What a bummer!!!!!!

In Options, I have "Days to keep incompete files" set at 365 days as a result of previous negative experiences, but Limewire sometimes has a mind of its own and arbitrarily change this back to 7. What a bummer!!!!!!

LimeWire also reverts to default with other options after they have been set so I have to regularly check them and change them back to the way I want them. What a bummer!!!!!!

These are "hard to find" files so I'm wondering if someone out there might have found a way to save what I've done rather than start over. It's wouldn't be such a bummer if there's a guru out there who knows a trick about this.

Umm, I'm not sure if the red files are Incompletes.
Would somebody be so kind as to tell us what they are (I promise I will remember it this time...)

I would like to know that, too, about the "red" files.

However, this I know for sure: Every one I have seen has come to be that way as a result of my "days to keep incomplete files" being aribitrarily (and maliciously) changed back to "7 days."

I've never seen any other red files except that while Limewire is starting up, all of them start out "red" but go "black" as soon as Limewire has finished starting up.

It looks to me like all of the red ones are retained in my incomplete files, but "in name only" only. Perhaps it does that so that I will know what I was trying to download---a small consolation at best since I very well know the files I'm tryiing to get. Aaargghhh!

By selecting "resume" from the Incomplete Library window, the file goes back into my "downloads" window but it starts at "zero" percent downloaded. Aaargghhh!

Still, I am thinking (maybe wishfully hoping) that someone out there has discovered a way to get those files to revert to the state they were in previously so I can resume the download at the point it was prior to turning red.

Pretty please. It's all I want for Christmas.

Same thing happened to me. 5 gigs of incompletes will be lost without a solution. Can anyone help?

Well, I was hoping that there might be someone out there who has figured this thing out but apparently that hasn't happened yet.

I am thinking that there must be a correlation between downloads.dat in the incomplete folder and the partial, incomplete downloads in that same folder. I think that file (downloads.dat) has imporatant data about the percent downloaded of each file and is the key to downloads resuming where they left off.

I am also thinking that it might be a good idea to make a copy of it with some regularity in the event my incomplete files arbitrarily turn red again as has happened to me at least twice. Aaarghhh!

I am saying this because I have a hunch that if I lost the partial downloads, then I might be able to replace the new downloads.dat with a copy of the backup and then those files would be begin to download at the point they were previously. Am I making sense?

I have searched the forums with every possible combination of words (red, black, partial and inoomplete downloads, etc. ) relative to this issue but can't find a complete solution or explanation anywhere. Yikes! All I have found thus far are questions about what those red files mean.

"Would somebody be so kind as to tell us what they are (I promise I will remember it this time...)" ----murasame

Thanks for replying to my other thread 'Library items in Red?'

I have a large number of incompletes & now at least 25% are red. Most of these are files that I started to download up to 6 weeks ago (they're mostly the older incompletes.) Organise your incomplete folder by date & you may find the same thing.

Funny you should refer to a 'Ghost' on my thread changing preferences. Only yesterday I found some prefs had mysteriously changed by themselves. My download folder had changed to the incomplete folder 24 hours earlier. Also my share options had included my incomplete folder & another folder which I had not chosen or deleted as share folders when I started with LW 4.0.4 6 weeks ago.

As far as forcing resume, I tried one (& only 1) file which was a very small download & at 60%, & unless I'm mistaken (I might be), it started downloading from 60%. I think I should explore the force resume option a little more before I come to any conclusions. I did notice (but only) a few files in red were ones I had deleted from my download page.

My days to complete dnlds was set to over 600, this is probably what I set it to, but it hasn't so far reverted back to the default 7 days.

Glad to know I'm not the only person with this issue & likewise there must be someone out there with an answer. In the meantime I'll keep monitoring things & try the force resume option with more files to see the result. I wonder if the files in red & preferences ghost are related?!

By the way, I'm not a pro user. If either of you are it might be worth reporting these behaviours of LW to LW support as bug observations.

I have very much come to the conclusion that items in the Incomplete folder when viewed in LW's Library window turn red because the related item in the Download window has been deleted or lossed its link!

One of LW's properties is to treat some files as separate downloads despite having the same name & size. So one day you can partially download a file & another day download the same file but it's treated as a different download because it's from another source. (ie: that can either mean a 2nd download file in the incomplete folder or both a separate download item in the download window & the incomplete folder.)

I had a closer look at all my 'red' items & compared them to the items in the download window & many had been deleted or another copy had been downlded already. Most items in red did not have a companion in the download window or there were 2 or more in the incomplete folder one being black & the others being in red of the same download topic. Meaning that for some reason these files in red had lost their relationship with the items in the download window. I even suspect that although the item was listed in the downld window & in the incomplete folder, it had for some reason lost its link. I found that for files that had already completed downld, there might also be other files of same name in the incomplete folder/library window.

I hope that all doesn't sound too rambly, but the point being that LW seems to lose its link with some items in the incomplete folder. So if you force resume download, it starts from zero despite maybe being as much as 99% downloaded already. Although I'm not so sure why force resume download should lose its link to the original.

I have come to my conclusions because I tried to 'force resume' items which may/may not have been listed in the downld window. I was surprised when I had multiple copies of a download in my Incomplete folder, sometimes labelled with (1) or (2) at the end of their name, & I forced resume or did a search for sources & which copy started downlding.

I do keep my search options for grouped files which 'should' in theory overcome this issue of multiple copies of a downld file. But it obviously needs much more refinement & finetuning. Perhaps Limewire engineers can try to overcome this & also stop the loss of links between items in the downld window & their counterparts in the incomplete folder!

When I first visited this forum my impression was that there were experienced experts/users who would be at hand to help anwser some of these types of questions (like they do in many other types of forums). But I haven't seen much evidence of that so far. If it's just users helping users then it's a little bit like kindergarten children teaching each other about university. Another forum I go to the panel of experts will either answer queries directly or correct what users have added in response to questions posted. If my conclusions are incorrect, I'd like somebody to point out to me what & why!!!

I still haven't fathomed out about the Preferences 'Ghost' which changes our prefs without us knowing about it. I am aware that in Limewire's earlier versions, people complained about corrupted preferences & needing to keep a backup. (I used to have a problem with my downld prefs becoming corrupted every few months & so it would forget all it's partial downloads.) Perhaps that's another area that LW's engineers can do a bit of 'Ghost-busting'!!!

No offence was intended in my last post. My 'Kindagarten' reference was somewhat over the top, purely wanting to make a point about somebody helping us! It was not a judgement about us users. Actually the moderators do give help given the chance & their rare free time. And this is a large forum to cater to.

However, it would be nice if somebody like SBerlin in particular could possibly give us a response to the issues we have discussed. I don't know if that's asking too much (cough cough chuckle)

This all may happen if you accidentally hit the "revert to default" button in the options. That happened to me a couple of times. If you don't fix your settings right away you may get in trouble.