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 woth your time . Get it here 

                   http://www.methlabs.org/PeerGuardian_v1.99_pr14.zip 

     New Peer guardian2 Beta released
. 
                   http://peerguardian.methlabs.org/pg2.html 

(3) 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. 
     Follow the pictures for easy connection.

                    http://forums.cricketmx.com/viewtopic.php?t=599 

(4) Do a "Whois" of the person you wish to download from, BEFORE starting any download or,  
      "Browse" them, most 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/Coaldust/fakefiles1.jpg 
     
     Also pay close attention to the settings listed under Status/Available.
      Many of the files the flooders use are not qued for, look here for an example. Avoid these. 

                  http://www.vladd44.com/mxfakes.jpg  
 

(5) 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 open the
      track listing once you have a  few % of the download , to check its the right file 

(6) When you obtain a good copy of a file that has many fakes, 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). 

(7) 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 limit your room  
     listing and cause you to be disconnected , 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 .Restart your WinMx and it will begin its operation without you noticing.

(8) Some People have reported that changing the "Preffered Peer Cache" setting to one of the  
      other 5 servers, used to connect you to the network, can help in obtaining a room listing. 
      This also, is found in WinMx Settings, under "WinMx Peer Network", as usual a restart will 
      make this change operation operational. 

(9) ISP blocking. This is a new phenomenon to WinMx also, but the normal way to counter 
    such problems is 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 E-mail,  
    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 primary connections, 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. 
       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 no user, should not be sharing 20+ copies of the same    
     song or movie, 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_89476 should not be connected as DSL, Cable and T1 with the same exact ID. 

(13) Your not sure about a video file ? Use Vlc player or Avi Preview to preview the file as
        its downloading, get them from here
 
                             http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ 

                            http://www.avipreview.com/avipreview.htm

(14) Last but not least, it has been noticed that some downloads are Honeypots , this means  
      you can download the first 2179 bytes and after that you will receive a File Mismatch error.
     If this happens to you, click on the new user who has the mismatched file
      (the one thats just turned red) , and delete the first one you where trying to get.
     Now "browse" the new user and select their file for download. 

 I hope the information in this document helps you, but if you get any problems check out the
    Help forums who compiled this document and the many users who all made it possible 
  
      http://www.vladd44.com/    http://forums.cricketmx.com/   http://www.kingmacro.net/ 
   
          http://michaelc.sytes.net/zorum_3_5/index.php?clearoff=1