Serious Problem. Help!

[b-rod3]

I'm running BitComet 0.64 on windows xp pro. I have a linksys router, though I don't think that's relevant to my problem.

From the minute I start BitComet I can start a timer for fifteen minutes and it will freeze on the clock every time. I then wait anywhere from five minutes to half an hour and it will unfreeze, reconnect and continue downloading. It continues like this almost exactly every fifteen minutes, it will freeze for a while then continue downloading for another fifteen minutes.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thanks

[kluelos]

First you should upgrade to version 0.70 of BitComet.

It sounds like you've got an event happening periodically that's interfering with your network. When BC freezes, does everything else work normally? Can you check email, websurf, write a novel, etc?

What other symptoms are you seeing? Precisely what do you mean when you say it "freezes"?

[b-rod3]

I guess I forgot to say that I've tried many different versions and the same thing happens with all of them. When it freezes I can't do anything with BitComet. No numbers change, I can't start or stop torrents, I can't change any settings, and if I had it minimized I can't restore it to normal size until it unfreezes. When it freezes I can do all the normal things I usually do with my computer.

I should also say that I've tried many different torrent clients and this happens with all of them so there must be something about my computer that doesn't sync with torrent clients but I couldn't find it.

Has this happened with anyone else?

[kluelos]

Just as a test

Open notepad, and resize the window so it takes up maybe 1/4th of your screen, no need to be very prceise here. I just want it to open at about that size. Go ahead and close it.

Now start BitComet, resize it to less than full-screen but not minimized to the tray or task bar. When it freezes, start up notepad. Then "grab" the notepad window at the title bar and move the window around and over BitComet's window. Just move it around. Now close notepad, and describe your BitComet screen right then before it unfreezes.

[b-rod3]

OK, I tried what you said and nothing changes on the bitcomet display.

Another bit of information that might be useful is when it freezes, the bar that displays the - File View Options Help - menus turns white and - File View Options Help - all dissapear so I can not use any of those menus. The whole display is basically just an image - anywhere I click has no response. Also, if I have bitcomet running along with another program and the bitcomet display is covered up WHEN it freezes the part that was covered except for the title bar is completely white like a blank wordprocessor document. It has to be covered at the moment it freezes, so the notepad test after it was already frozen didn't have any effect.

[bitdave]

From the minute I start BitComet I can start a timer for fifteen minutes and it will freeze on the clock every time.

This sounds suspiciously like a problem with the DHT Network which makes thousands of connections every so often.

Go into Bitcomet options and disable the DHT Network, then you must restart Bitcomet for it to take effect.

After you've restarted Bitcomet begin downloading again and see if it still freezes.

What antivirus / firewall software is running on your PC?

[kluelos]

I've seen this before, but it's really difficult to pin down. It's probably a video driver issue, but it seems to affect more than one card and hasn't been pinned to specific versions. But I'm not certain of that, so by all means try disabling DHT and see if that helps.

IF not, try first upgrading your video driver if it isn't the most recent version and see if that helps. If you're already there, try downgrading to the previous version. (It's good to keep several versions of drivers on your hard disk so you can do things like this if needed.) Also see if you can find alternative drivers for your card.

[b-rod3]

OK, I already had DHT disabled so that can't be it; I've also used DHT before but nothing changes.

Next, I upgraded my video driver.... no change.

I then completely disabled my video card.... still no change.

I'm assuming that if BitComet acted the same while my video card was disabled then this can't be the problem, right? After that I decided there was no use in trying other drivers. Tell me if I'm wrong.

Another little quirk is that if I close BitComet while it's frozen I lose some of the progress I made during the fifteen minutes prior to it freezing. So if I download fifty MB in the fifeen minute window, bitcomet freezes, I close it while it's frozen then reopen it -- it only shows that maybe thirty MB was downloaded. However, if I wait until BitComet unfreezes of its own accord all the previous progress stays. Could this have something to do with hash checking?

[kluelos]

Yes, it almost certainly does. During the freeze, BC has stuff in cache that never gets written to disk, so there will be some backsliding. I'm going to suggest you try µtorrent. There's a bit of adjustment and a different feature set, but it will probably work. Keep trying BitComet from time to time though, and see if it's still freezing. Whatever the problem is, does sometimes just go away by itself. It's probably really due to system reconfiguration, but I don't have the data to say for sure.