LAN locking up

[harrym1byt]

Hi All, need some help with this problem please....

I've used Shareaza for a few years and generally without issues, but this one has me stumped. My main desktop PC locks the wired LAN up completely if I run Shareaza on it. It has run on this PC absolutely fine before and it runs without problems on my other wired desktop and via a laptop using WiFi.

I will be able to use the LAN quite normally, everything working soothly, then I run Shareaza and everything soon grinds to complete a halt. How long it takes for this to happen seems to vary, sometimes almost instantly, sometimes a few minutes. Sometimes Shareaza manages to make a connection, often it doesn't, but once it has locked the LAN up I have no choice but to reboot that PC. Shutting Shareaza down doesn't help, nor does shutting my browser down and it stops all use of the LAN by that one PC until it is rebooted. Often the only way I can get it to reboot is by holding the button in on my PC for longer than 10 seconds, because the usual XP Start/ Turn Off Computer/ Restart will not work once Shareaza has been run.

I have tried removing Shareaza and reinstalling - which didn't help. I have tried running various 'fix your PC' type utilities. Most recently I tried the free vesion of IOBIT Advanced SytemCare. That managed to get my LAN to work normally and Shareaza to connect, but it only worked until I hibernated the system yesterday evening. On starting the PC up again this morning, it had locked the LAN up again - necessitating my having to force the PC to shut down and reboot.

[harrym1byt]

Just to add...

When the LAN is locked up, rebooting the router makes no difference at all.

[cyko_01]

it sounds to me like your router has problems with port forwarding - designating and releasing them. what brand and model router are you using? what port(s) have you forwarded for shareaza? do you pass the connection test? do you have upnp enabled in shareaza? As for the freezing of your computer and it not shutting down, that is probably a separate problem.

[harrym1byt]

Netgear DG834G (V3 I think). I had it set to allow port 6346 for Shareraza for some time, but Shareaza worked reasonably before I set the port. Just to recap, the same PC + the same router and Shareaza all worked togther fine, until this problem suddenly developed. I only have problems shutting XP down and with the LAN, when I try to run Shareaza on this one PC.

I'm not sure about the connection test, what is that please?

[kees55]

I understand that you run shareaza on different computers. I suppose they all works with a different port.
Port-forwarting of a port can only sent to one computer.
One ques:
I know a function in the firewall of the router can give many problems to WIFI , maybe also to wired lan ?
This function is the ipflootdetection and if present then it's best turnt off.

[harrym1byt]

I only have the port forwarding set up to forward to the destop. I only rarely use Shareaza on the laptop so it is set as per default and works with no forwarding. There is no ipflootdetection setting in the router that I could find. One more point which I didn't mention, everything on my LAN occupies a different IP and the IP's are fixed ones. My WAN IP is not static.

[ailurophobe]

Well, since Shareaza works on the other machines and has worked in the machine in the past, the probable cause is a recent change in the configuration of the PC in question. Alternately, the Shareaza installation on the machine has some non-standard settings that cause the issue. Additionally, your port forward might be wrong, a router reset should fix that, but it might "break" something on your PC, which a router reset would then fail to fix.

The connection test is found in the help menu.

[old_death]

[harrym1byt]

It fails the test run via Shareaza and via the website.

[old_death]

So it shows that you pass neither TCP nor UDP test? (Both tests shown in red?)

[harrym1byt]

Yes, it fails both TCP and UDP tests - both shown in red.

[harrym1byt]

Update -

I adjusted the number of connections down from 100, to 40. Then after once again forcing my system to reboot via the button, I did manage to get green on both, testing it the very second after Shareaza had loaded itself up. Shareaza also managed to connect to some servers briefly (something it hasn't managed for a long time) and my browsing continued to run for a short while - then everything rapidly ground to a halt.

It seems to me that Shareaza is generating a mass of traffic on the LAN and totally choking it up, it doesn't clear even when i shut Shareaza down. Would that make any sense?

[old_death]

[harrym1byt]

harrym1byt wrote:
I adjusted the number of connections down from 100, to 40.Where did you do this change exactly? (I am trying to understand exactly what you did to come up with a solution, so details would be welcome.)

Sorry, I used the wrong expression. In Shareaza setting - the Maximum Transfers. Reducing that value seemed to allow LAN access to survive a little longer.

I found a setting in my router for DDoS and the protection was enabled so I tried disabling it, which has again seemed to help a little (delayed the loss of LAN access a while longer) though not fixed the issue.

[harrym1byt]

I've just discovered one maybe peculiarity...

Shareaza locks the LAN up even when I have it set not to connect. Load Shareaza up, set it not to connect, close Shareaza down, then force the PC to reboot via the button. Start Shareaza (connections still disabled and left disabled), then the LAN access still locks up.

[ailurophobe]

If the advanced system care was capable of fixing the problem, you could try running it again and see if it shows any information of what it does to fix it.

Is your XP patched for higher half-open connection limit? Some updates reset this to the totally insufficient default causing weird and sudden connection problems. Also Windows has IIRC a system utility for seeing system events that should give some information on why connections fail.

[harrym1byt]

[ailurophobe]

Well, whether it solved the problem or not, increasing this limit is a good thing. There is no actual harm in having it too high and if it is too low it can cause pretty much anything depending on what it makes randomly and unnecessarily fail. And even if your lucky enough that nothing outright fails, it can make things much slower. That said Shareaza should be able to work with the default without breaking anything, possibly you previously had this patched and have Shareaza configured for that?

[harrym1byt]

Yes, it has definately solved it - still working fine I'm happy to say.

As near as I can remember, Shareaza stopped working and started causing issues some time after I was forced to do a full reinstall just before Christmas due to a virus attack. It was a matter of installing the OS from the manufacturers restore disk, install the XP service packs, my applications, then copy my data and personal stuff back in. After it, Shareaza had seemed to work on the desktop, but not very well. It then just steadily got worse to the point where I would resort to my laptop for Shareaza. Last week I decided to see if I could get to the bottom of the problem and hence ended up on here seeking ideas.

Once again - thanks for the help to sort it out!

[ailurophobe]

You're welcome, but I must confess I am baffled. If you recently had to re-install Shareaza, it should work correctly with the connection limited versions of Windows with only a minor and unavoidable performance hit. There should be no impact bad enough to kill your LAN, certainly not if you start Shareaza without connecting to any networks.