WinMx Help Guide
This guide was put together to help all of you avoid being driven from this network by the "Bully Boy " tactics of the Riaa/Mpaa and the companies that pay them .
Please follow theses useful steps to make sure that your getting the most out of WinMx.
(1) The first thing you should do is join a room, which ever one takes your fancy . This will help make the network strong and also get a network in place for when we need to act in a concerted manner.
Another benefit of this, is the source of uncorrupted files, that are held by fellow room members.
(2) Install Peer Guardian and make sure it is active when your using WinMx. This will ensure that you cannot connect to many of the flooders, the Peer Guardian list is updated very regularly, so dont think that its not worth your time . Get it here
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/peer ... e?download
Peer Guardian2 Beta 6 is a much improved version that is lean on your machines resources.
A further special blocklist exists for Winmx that you can import into your Peer Guardian and it will then update automatically daily.
This list is maintained by 3 winmx related sites working together to track the flooders and is highly accurate. Get instructions from Here
on how to add the list to your Peer Guardian2
(3) Another great program for blocking the flooders is "Sherwood", This is a program that will block the flooders from leeching your bandwidth to flood the network and must be started just before you start winmx up. Get it from here
http://sherwood.sh.funpic.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1
The one to install is called "Sherwood Base" (the top one in the list).
Cheers for that Robin
(4) Use our simple guide to connect to Open Nap , this is always a source of good, non fake files, and trust me it really is easy, as its already built into WinMx.
http://forums.cricketmx.com/viewtopic.php?t=599
(5) When searching for any file always add this to the lower search box.
A while ago the flooders where using many varitions so the -c: filter was used but at the moment the full file path has the string "user" in it so by blocking this you get to block thousands of them.
To be on the safe side do a "Whois" of the person you wish to download from, BEFORE starting any download or "Browse" them, many of the fakers are sharing 3OOO files and have stupidly large amounts of slots open.
Dont waste your time on these people, a simple check like this will save you much time and annoyance, as well as reducing the load they place on the network. See here for an example of a fake set of files
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v667/ ... files1.jpg
(6) Right click on your download as your getting it, and select Play , this will allow you to confirm its the correct file. Also if your getting an album wrapped title (ALBW) , you can try opening the listing one you have a few % of the download , to check its the right file
(7) When you obtain a good copy of a file thats being heavily faked, remember to share it so others like yourself, can aviod having to waste time sorting real from fake. (Please resist the urge to write "Real" or "Not Fake" in the file name, as the flooders do this too).
( 8 ) If you are experiencing difficulty with your connection please be aware that a patch exists for Secondary network users. This will help filter out a small problem that can cause you to be disconnected and limiting your room list, get it here.
http://www.kingmacro.net/kingmacro/?section=mx
Look for the "WinMx Patch", this will go into your C:\Program files\Winmx\ folder and should be called olepro32.dll (believe it or not, people have tried to put zip files in there and then said its not working ) . Restart your WinMx and it will begin its operation without you noticing a thing.
(9) ISP blocking. This is a new phenomenon to WinMx also, but the normal ways to counter such problems are to change ports to ones not used by WinMx, (6699 tcp, and 6257 udp), not using those ports will give you a good chance to avoid the filtering system they use.
Your ports can be changed by going into WinMx Settings up top and looking for "Incoming Tcp", and "In/Out Udp Packets". I cant give you much in the way of guidance on what you should use, because the more varied the ports we all use, the harder it is to shut down our network ( pick a number between 0 and 65535) . In most cases I suggest going to lower numbers that are used by things such as webmail, msn, web pages, and many other services that it would be wise for the ISP not to block.
Once you have changed the ports restart WinMx for the change to take effect.
(10) Do Not under any circumstances use WinMx to trade Wma format files as these contain identifying information that can lead straight back to your machine.
Play safe and rip to mp3 only
(11) Something a lot of people are overlooking, is that leaving the search box open on one of these flooded titles will drop all your primaries, by tying up all the network
Click stop as soon as the files go over 1000 and refine your search, by bitrate, title , connection type. Otherwise your doing their "dirty work" for them.
A few folks have mentioned this aspect of the flooding, so close those search boxes after searching and press stop quickly if it looks like its going to "avalanche"
(12) Not sure if a file is fake? Never risk downloading and testing it. They could be running a TCP viewer and logging IP's. (same as you can do to them for inclusion into the peer guardian listings
)When doing a search and getting thousands of results, click the "User" bar in the header of the search window. That will put all users names in alphabetical order. Common sense would tell you that any user would not be sharing 20+ copies of the same song, regardless of how it is named.
Also watch for the same name and hash with a multitude of connection types. i.e. User name: Disturbed426_8947 should not be connected as DSL, Cable and T1 with the same exact ID.
Your not sure about a video file ? Use Vlc player to preview the file as its downloading, get it from here
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ Thanx to Snyper for that tip
If your downloading an ALBW filw you can view the contents of the file by trying to unwrap it after a few % of the download. Thanks to Gypsy Blue for that one.
Fresh from the tips dept is this great pic and tip from Faceby88. Look at the parts on the pic below and see how the good files have active users qued , the fakes have no such users.
http://www.vladd44.com/mxfakes.jpg
(Credit for item 12 goes to Vittijr, although I have edited certain portions .)
Well folks you know what to do. know any new tips ? just post underneath here , but practical tips only please
[EDIT] Post updated to reflect current position.
