November 27, 2007 by sharky
A list of some miscellaneous tips for P2P programs:
- — Try to avoid using P2P programs such as Limewire, Shareaza and BearShare etc. to search for software and games, since many of these files are infected with malware. Use the BitTorrent protocol instead. Music, movies and TV shows are a safe bet, however.
- — Try to upgrade to the “Pro” versions or ad-free “Lite” versions if possible. You may be able to find these premium editions right from a search in the same ‘freeware’ program.
- — If you decide to run more than one P2P program at a time, don’t forget that they BOTH will conceivably be using bandwidth to upload, which in turn can impair downloading for both programs.
- — Note that P2P programs/networks can and have been permanently shut down (lest we forget KaZaA?). This has also happened to WinMX in recent times as well as others, so keep up-to-date on the available programs.
- — Try to “enable” as many networks as you can within the settings. This will maximize speed and search results. (This is not possible within Limewire Pro, as it connects to just one network - Gnutella).
- — If you choose to update or install a newer version of the software, some settings may revert back to the default selection. Normally ‘in-program’ upgrades won’t do this, but if you upgrade from Limewire to Limewire Pro, this may be the case.
P2P Search Help
Bitzi.com
A site worth honorable mention is http://bitzi.com. Here you can find information on just about every song/movie made, just type it in at the search and it’ll come back with information. This is also a key tool in finding the right movie to download, too. We all know what happens when you search for a popular movie: You get 42 results for the same thing!
But at Bitzi, for example, type in “Dead Man’s Chest” and it came back with the proper 900MB aXXo release in the search as the top recommended one. Now, you can’t download from this site, but it’s handy when you want to look up a movie and see exactly the FILE NAME that you should be looking for, plus it has users’ ratings next to the results - great for being able to filter out the garbage on BitTorrent sites and P2P programs. This site makes it easy to find what you shouldn’t be looking for!
Sigster v1.2
We recommend Sigster because it can help search for the proper version of a file. For instance, if you are looking for the “Casino Royale” movie on Shareaza P2P, you will receive many results that match. So which one is the right one to download? Well, Sigster can help.
Sigster searches for fake-free and virus-free files on the P2P networks. Since Sigster searches for hash files, it’s much more likely that the files you download using Sigster are virus free, fake free and have more sources to download from.
Sigster also works well with BitTorrent - it displays the proper torrent weblink to download the torrent from, without having to search a particular torrent site. It will automatically launch your browser to the ‘download torrent’ page of a popular website that’s hosting it!
Here’s a screenshot of Sigster:
Clearing Your Incomplete Files
This section is designed for users who would otherwise be using Limewire for unscrupulous transfers (i.e. Porn), or do not want others in the household to view past search history or incomplete files. Incomplete files are especially incriminating because the exact title of the files are displayed, even if the file was cancelled before any data was received.
You want to set the number of days that incomplete files are kept on your computer. The default is seven (7) days but you want to change this to zero (0). Go to TOOLS > OPTIONS and select “Saving”. At the bottom right, you can enter the new number here. This doesn’t delete them - it just stores them for a lot less time (in case you forget to delete them manually in the future).
Incomplete Limewire files are stored on the computer in a folder at “C:\Program Files\Limewire\Incomplete” by default. There are two ways files will end up here: One; you cancelled them at the bottom during download for reasons of poor speed, no connection etc. Even files that didn’t receive a single byte of data will still appear here and the file will still exist (in name). Two; the file was downloaded correctly but Limewire found the file to be corrupt. (The file may appear in the playlist/saved files AND the incomplete list at the same time). These are very simple to delete, just click the LIBRARY tab at the top, then click “Incomplete Files” to the left. Now, highlight the files to be deleted and click the DELETE button. That’s it! You can also drag these files from here to a “File Shredder” window as well.
NOTE: As mentioned before, some files (most commonly *.mp3 files) seem to play OK but appear in the ‘Incomplete files’ list. If you delete those files, they will undoubtedly disappear from the Saved Files and will not be in any playlists. (They would have disappeared in 7 days anyways). If you are already familiar with Limewire and have sometimes noticed that songs seem to be magically disappearing from the playlist, it’s because they were listed as incomplete and had only a week to live. Try to download the song/file again, perhaps from a different source.
NOTE for Shareaza: If you leave a search window open and exit the program, the search results and headings are saved and are displayed the next time Shareaza is run. Be sure to close ALL your search windows before exiting the program. This also bodes true for some other P2P programs, as well.
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