just installed 388. Works beautifully with win98! Always connects right away with 5 or 6 of 6 hosts. lately (not specific to 388, also did it on 1.2) , anything I download ends up being a repeated loop of only a few seconds (usually the chorus) instead of the full material. I download the most common (highest 'score') choices, then play on mediaplayer 7.01. This is either a problem on my end, or a result of someones contagious 'bad joke.' Any suggestions?

btw, here's the latest culprits: 1. No Doubt - Hella Good; 2. Eminem - White America; 3. Eminem - Cleanin' out my Closet

I case you have not herd the news: RIAA has been dumping these files into the Gnutella network in an effort to deter people from using it. Just pick files that have a reletivly high host count (number all the way to the right in the search). As people delete the bogus ones, only the good files remain in a large quantity.

this unfortunately isn't a good "fix" - i've dowloaded plenty of looped files that have had the highest host rates... not sure if it's b/c everyone's dowloading these files then not removing them from their shared folders OR if somehow the Big Brother companies are behind it.

any other suggestions on how to avoid this? we must come up w/ some codes or something to work around the bogus files?!!!!

The number of hosts is usualy good if it is noticably higher than the other files with the same name. There are lots of servers out there spoofing these files on purpose, it may not always be the most popular if the numbers are smaller.