Utorrent 3.x crashing in W7 64 bit constantly

[Hammer_Time]

So I have been a long time user of the utorrent client for years now ( http://www.utorrent.com ) and never had a problem with it until recently.

I am running Windows 7 SP1 64-bit in case you were wondering.

Last week my problems started, every time I launched utorrent 3.0 client ( latest stable release, not Beta! ) it would immediately lock up my new D-Link DIR-655 router ( 3 months old, never any problems with it previously ) it would cause my router to mess up and drop my internet connection ( red X on the network connection icon in my system tray ). Using the W7 "troubleshoot problems" would not fix it, would only change it to a "yellow exclamation mark" symbol on the icon. Only power cycling the router would fix this issue and get me connected and online once again. I have not changed any settings in my router, and all ports were properly forwarded for utorrent ( green checkmark appears in client ), nor did I change any utorrent settings. Today utorrent said "an upgrade is now available" so I let it automatically upgrade itself, of course once it relaunched itself it did the same thing again, crashed my router and broke my internet connection...argh... I am so pissed off at utorrent.. it worked great for so many years , now this...

I uninstalled utorrent and installed BitComet 1.29 , it is working perfect...fast downloads and no crashes or problems so far ( 1 hour worth of downloading at 800 Kb/s right now ) I even like the BitComet interface better... has more features and is more user friendly.

Sayonara uTorrent!! It was nice knowing you, but you botched it up big time lately, happy with free BitComet now... just fyi for anybody else experiencing uTorrent 3.x troubles right now...

EDIT: Turns out it is D-Link's crap implementation of "UPNP", not uTorrents fault after all, see my post below...

[Silver]

I saw that *do you want to upgrade to the latest version bla bla bla*
lucky me that I didn't then

[Hammer_Time]

Indeed! I am still running BitComet successfully here, no crashes or any problems so far...

[<R.t..>^>Fusionc]

Heh, my very first torrent client was BitComet but then I moved to uTorrent after some time and I am still using and its awesome. I have the same setup as you except for the router. It is a DIR-628 with 1.13 Firmware and I did upgrade it from the stock stuff and I know there are newer firmware out there but nothing to actually make things faster and some minor bug fixes of which I am not experiencing. There is also a risk of borking my current setup with the new firmware too. I also used the "Check Now" thing to check for the latest firmware and the one I have now is detected as the latest firmware for my router so there is another reason for me to not update the firmware.

So, you might want to check your firmware for your router. You can also try a different router to see if uTorrent locks up the router. But you do mention that you didn't have problems with it before previously when you had uTorrent running. So, it could be uTorrent fault in this case.

[Fuzz]

There is a utorrent setting, I believe its net.max_halfopen that if it is set to high, it will crash your router. Mine is 75, and it took some fine tuning to get that. Much higher and it kills internet connections and I have to reboot my router. Try dropping it to 50 and see if that helps, then bump it up until you kill your connection.

[<R.t..>^>Fusionc]

There is a utorrent setting, I believe its net.max_halfopen that if it is set to high, it will crash your router. Mine is 75, and it took some fine tuning to get that. Much higher and it kills internet connections and I have to reboot my router. Try dropping it to 50 and see if that helps, then bump it up until you kill your connection.

xD Ah yes, I forgot about that setting. I have looked it up in the past and I did read that if you do set it too high, there will be some problems abound. Although, I have mine set to 100 (I think that is the default setting, haven't touched the Advanced menu to change anything) and nothing bad has happened.

[TAViX]

uTorrent 2 is the best so far.

[TAViX]

found that I can no longer put my PC to sleep while running version 3...Now that sucks!

[Sauron_Daz]

You want it to sleep while downloading something?

[Hammer_Time]

Heh, my very first torrent client was BitComet but then I moved to uTorrent after some time and I am still using and its awesome. I have the same setup as you except for the router. It is a DIR-628 with 1.13 Firmware and I did upgrade it from the stock stuff and I know there are newer firmware out there but nothing to actually make things faster and some minor bug fixes of which I am not experiencing. There is also a risk of borking my current setup with the new firmware too. I also used the "Check Now" thing to check for the latest firmware and the one I have now is detected as the latest firmware for my router so there is another reason for me to not update the firmware.

So, you might want to check your firmware for your router. You can also try a different router to see if uTorrent locks up the router. But you do mention that you didn't have problems with it before previously when you had uTorrent running. So, it could be uTorrent fault in this case.

My old ( 2 years old approx ) DIR-655 router finally died on me this summer, so I bought the same model again , got in July for $90 from CC here, paid extra $15 for 3 year extended warranty ( something I never do, but made an exception as it didnt cost much for the extended warranty and have seen routers die in under 3 years so wanted the extra insurance ). I pulled the plastic cover off it and was pleased to see no more huge heatsinks, they combined the previously separate router processor and multimedia streaming chip into a single chip now, and also there is a very tiny ceramic coated heatsink ( 1/4" thick approx. ) sitting on this single processor, no heat sink "fins" like before..so D-Link obviously shrunk this router ( new manufacturing lithography ) and less power, less heat = win win!! I doubt this router will ever overheat, the ceramic heatsink is very cool to the touch even under heavy load ( Xbox 360 on Live, two computers running torrents etc. ) so I am very pleased with it so far. It was only last week I started having problems, and finally figured out it was uTorrent causing all of them. Ever since I uninstalled uTorrent 3.0 and installed BitComet, no more connection problems! My router has latest firmware, 2.x or whatever... thanks for the tip but already did that!

[Hammer_Time]

There is a utorrent setting, I believe its net.max_halfopen that if it is set to high, it will crash your router. Mine is 75, and it took some fine tuning to get that. Much higher and it kills internet connections and I have to reboot my router. Try dropping it to 50 and see if that helps, then bump it up until you kill your connection.

Thanks for this tip, but since I already got rid of uTorrent and am now happy with BitComet, not going to bother going back to uTorrent to see if your tip was causing the problem or not. Just to clarify, I never modified the "net.max_halfopen" setting in uTorrent, have been running uTorrent 3.0 for a while now, it was only this past week that it started screwing up my router/internet connection. I made no changes to uTorrent or my router so found that weird... uTorrent did find an "update" just the other day though, and after it updated itself it made things much worse, could not even launch uTorrent anymore without it immediately killing my internet connection. Gave up on it then.

[Hammer_Time]

uTorrent 2 is the best so far.

Agreed, never had any problem with version 2... but version 3 is necessary for fastest downloads , too bad it is so buggy...

found that I can no longer put my PC to sleep while running version 3...Now that sucks!

Doesn't surprise me at all..

[Fuzz]

Its possible the update changed that setting .. . or something else. Oh well, at least you have something that allows you to keep borrowing from the library!

[Hammer_Time]

True!

[TAViX]

I cannot see any option to disable/enable that. Even in DNA the screensaver thingy is disabled....

[Hammer_Time]

Okay, more news... so while BitComet worked fine for me the minute I installed it, it started developing the same problems as uTorrent when I launched it lately ( freezing/locking up my D-Link router ). Finally it gave me the info I needed, when I launched it this morning, BitComet crashed with error message: "UPNP has failed, BitComet has crashed"

So I disabled the "UPNP" option in BitComet settings, and now everything is fine ( so far, launched BitComet 3 times since then and no more crashes, port is forwarded properly, got green lights all around ). I have a static ip on my pc so I can forward the port properly.

I googled this error message and found this:

http://www.utorrent.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=9154

The thing is, µTorrent, unlike Azureus and BitComet, just uses the Windows XP API for UPnP, and apparently, a lot of routers are non-standard or just different in their implementation, so it doesn't work for quite a few people. However, ludde is planning on redoing UPnP himself to hopefully solve these issues.

Also, you should never use UPnP on D-Link routers, because it can cause them to lock up or otherwise give you problems.

So, it is not uTorrents fault here at all, it is the shitty implementation of "UPnP" on my D-Link router that caused all this grief.

The confusing thing, is that I always had "UPnP" enabled by default in all previous versions of uTorrent while using the same model of D-Link router ( DIR-655 for 2 years, died, bought brand new one (same model) 3 months ago ) all this time, so why did it work fine for me configured this way up until last week? I guess the new version of uTorrent has something different regarding its UPnP implementation or something along those lines... dunno...

Anyways, apologies to uTorrent for initially blaming them for a D-Link router UPnP problem , I should have checked the FAQ's first...

[DIREWOLF75]

The confusing thing, is that I always had "UPnP" enabled by default in all previous versions of uTorrent while using the same model of D-Link router ( DIR-655 for 2 years, died, bought brand new one (same model) 3 months ago ) all this time, so why did it work fine for me configured this way up until last week? I guess the new version of uTorrent has something different regarding its UPnP implementation or something along those lines... dunno...

Different firmware would be my guess?


Still, you said BitComet had more functionality so i might take a look at it as well.
I´ve never been 100% happy about uTorrent and i only switched away from Azureus because of all the changes that was made to that a few years ago.

[Hammer_Time]

I would guess that, but my new DIR-655 has the latest firmware version ( 2.00NA ) , the router is only 3 months old so it shipped with this version of fw, and I made no changes to uTorrent ( other than the update last week, but it started acting up a few days before the update took place ) , nor my router after initial setup of router... been working great for months, then all of a sudden it started being not happy...I think there might have been minor uTorrent "update" the week before last, and it is the last 2 versions of uTorrent causing the UPnP problem with my D-Link router.

BitComet worked fine after initial install as mentioned before, but then the next day I fired it up (without changing settings after initially setting the correct port to forward to etc etc. ) then it locked up my router right away , same as latest uTorrent was doing. Didn't get any error message on the first two times it crashes, but then finally on the 3rd attempt it crashed with the informative error message that "UPnP has failed..." so I could finally nail the problem down precisely.

I have used BitComet all afternoon today, finished dling torrent, closed program, all with no issues at all, router is happy so far. Knock on wood, I believe I have solved this problem which came out of nowhere. What I really like about BitComet is that it shows individual file dl speed as well as total dl speed of all files when I hover the mouse over the BitComet icon minimized in my system tray. uTorrent only shows the total dl speed of all torrents when you do this, not individual file dl speeds like BitComet does. uTorrent is a great client too and generally works well ( except UPnP with D-Link routers obviously!! ) , I just now happen to like some of these nice "extra" features that BitComet has so I am sticking with it...works fine now , hope it stays that way!

[Sauron_Daz]

Its possible the update changed that setting .. . or something else. Oh well, at least you have something that allows you to keep borrowing from the library!

[Sauron_Daz]

Okay, more news... so while BitComet worked fine for me the minute I installed it, it started developing the same problems as uTorrent when I launched it lately ( freezing/locking up my D-Link router ). Finally it gave me the info I needed, when I launched it this morning, BitComet crashed with error message: "UPNP has failed, BitComet has crashed"

So I disabled the "UPNP" option in BitComet settings, and now everything is fine ( so far, launched BitComet 3 times since then and no more crashes, port is forwarded properly, got green lights all around ). I have a static ip on my pc so I can forward the port properly.

I googled this error message and found this:

http://www.utorrent.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=9154

The thing is, µTorrent, unlike Azureus and BitComet, just uses the Windows XP API for UPnP, and apparently, a lot of routers are non-standard or just different in their implementation, so it doesn't work for quite a few people. However, ludde is planning on redoing UPnP himself to hopefully solve these issues.

Also, you should never use UPnP on D-Link routers, because it can cause them to lock up or otherwise give you problems.

So, it is not uTorrents fault here at all, it is the shitty implementation of "UPnP" on my D-Link router that caused all this grief.

The confusing thing, is that I always had "UPnP" enabled by default in all previous versions of uTorrent while using the same model of D-Link router ( DIR-655 for 2 years, died, bought brand new one (same model) 3 months ago ) all this time, so why did it work fine for me configured this way up until last week? I guess the new version of uTorrent has something different regarding its UPnP implementation or something along those lines... dunno...

Anyways, apologies to uTorrent for initially blaming them for a D-Link router UPnP problem , I should have checked the FAQ's first...

A FAQ comes up with the answer to a problem frequently, but not always...unfortunatly.