uTorrent

A newer version of uTorrent is available.

• 1.0 stars

  "How the heck do I downgrade?"

  August 29, 2012  |   By Aikousha

  Pros

  None with this upgrade... in fact there are five very good reasons, and a possible sixth to not get this upgrade!

  Cons

  Bloatware and unwanted and unnecessary baggage. Downloading without file extensions, random stopping of torrents, sidebar data and selections not matching list, interference with device charging, and most likely system destabilization.

  Summary

  The previous version (3.1.2?) worked very well, with the exception that it left processes running when you deliberately exit the program. If you didn't manually terminate those processes under task manager, the program would not re-launch when you wanted it later. I figured when the 3.2 upgrade came up, that this would fix the issue, so I let it auto-update. BIG MISTAKE!
  It failed the update completely, not finishing past the first install screen, and pretty much breaking everything, and it even left the 3.1 version information behind. It made such a mess, I had to do a complete uninstall and clean-up. Wasted almost 3 hours getting that done (including a registry clean).
  Decided to grab a fresh copy and do a clean re-install. Unfortunately that worked. It installed, but it is so broken and messed up, it's not worth using anymore, and I have to use Vuze now.
  Version 3.2 now has the following "features:"
  1. On over 75% of the files downloaded, they don't have extensions attached... so you have to guess what they should be, or manually open the .torrent file with wordpad to find out what it should be... this however is difficult to do if you are downloading C programs where they all have the same name, just different extensions, and you have to figure which took priority and what overwrote what other file...
  2. The sidebar, which should help keep things simple (Seeding, Active, Downloading, etc.) is broken... the number that follows in parenthesis doesn't hold true... i.e., I have it show "Downloading (9)", which is correct, but the list presented has over 35 items in it... same thing with "Completed (24)", which should be correct, as I have a number of items which are stopped... but the list is empty.
  3. Since the only list that can be worked from has so many entries (basically everything), it took a while for me to discover that it was also randomly stopping the torrents in the list (and not restarting them). So it appears part of my new torrent job is to come home and restart all the torrents that stopped while I was at University... ***!?
  4. Now, I can't be certain of this next one, but I think it's telling... since the update and re-install... which was via uTorrent directly, and then from here... I have had 3 BSODs, and they have only occurred while uTorrent was running (I don't leave it on all the time, especially since a lot of the torrents are private person-to-person, or person-to-lab, sending or receiving items too big for e-mail, or not appropriate for the University servers.
  5. Oh, and there's all that crap that they now try to sneak in during the install... since I tried to clean install this a couple times, I had to be very careful I didn't miss any of those checkboxes to keep the crap off this computer... I normally expect this type of garbage from Windows software, but I had done this so many times, it would have been easy to miss one of them. Oh, and then there's the annoying advert for Plus that sits in the sidebar. I did find out of frustration, that you can make it disappear by right-clicking on it... but I'm guessing that little un-listed option will be gone in the next version, at least at this rate.
  6. And this I just discovered... it interferes with my iPod's ability to charge! While it is running I get a little yellow triangle telling me that charging is incompatible "with this device." The device is the basic USB-Dock Connector cable, which can't be incompatible unless something is trying to do something it shouldn't. Who added the device stuff... I thought this was supposed to be a lean program?
  
  Now since there are so many variations in the Windows systems and set-ups, I don't know if some of this will happen to everyone... but the previous version at least worked properly until after I exited it. And no other changes were made to my system during this little nightmare... except uTorrent, itself, and the required registry clean-up.
  Win7-64 Ultimate, 2.53Ghz Intel Core2Duo, 8GB, 500GB HDD
  
  Anybody know where to get a previous version... where the basic stuff up to the inclusion of magnet-links, works?

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1 reply to this review

• Reply by TresaG on October 2, 2012

  After updating to the 3.2 version, even my computer had BSODs. They happen just when I start the torrents, or when they are done and I delete the torrent. I am trying to think if installing just the portable version or some other software would work?

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