HELP!!! Pie vs. Yours - WinMX Crash and Possible Hijack Issue from Pie

[TrainTheK9]

HELP!

I am really at my wits' end.  This is my last effort before I scrap MX and never use it again.

As you discussed somewhere else on your site, I am one of the many people who are constantly being jerked back and forth between the three "factions" of WinMX.  I don't know what to believe anymore!  All I know is that after many different attempts and many different configurations, I can not get MX to work right anymore, and now even with MX off, someone is still connecting to my computer, and I don't know how to find out what is connection.  I just see my network connection in the SYSTRAY on almost constantly even when I am not doing anything on the internet.

First, my system:

OS Name         Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
Version         5.0.2195 Service Pack 4 Build 2195
OS Manufacturer      Microsoft Corporation
System Name      SERVER
System Manufacturer      MSI
System Model      MS-7058
System Type      X86-based PC
Processor         x86 Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 1 GenuineIntel ~2667 Mhz
BIOS Version      BIOS Date: 07/14/04 14:33:42 Ver: 08.00.11
Windows Directory      C:\WINNT
System Directory      C:\WINNT\system32
Boot Device      \Device\Harddisk0\Partition1
Locale         United States (I am actually in the Philippines)
User Name         SERVER\Administrator
Total Physical Memory      1,039,728 KB
Available Physical Memory   759,052 KB
Total Virtual Memory       3,542,436 KB
Available Virtual Memory   3,065,780 KB
Page File Space      2,502,708 KB
Page File         C:\pagefile.sys

A summary of the problem is simply this:  Using WinMX 3.54 with your 3.0 installed, WinMX will not stay open for more than 24 hours. when leaving it on overnight, it is always shut down when coming back to it the next morning.  Also, with MX shut down, there is almost constantly internet activity observed on the Network Connection icon in the systray.  I have SpywareBlaster (which now crashes every time I try to get an update, unless I do it in safe mode).  I have run scans using both Ad-Aware and Spybot, and only minor things were found.  However, even though I deleted them, the problem remains.

Now, here are the details that got me to this point.

When I first came back to MX about a month ago, I found that winMX no longer worked.  My first exposure to how to fix it was Vladd4's site.  I followed those instructions and reinstalled 3.53 with his patch.  After getting back up and running, I started learning about the whole political issue between Vladd44, Gemini and you.  I can't remember who was who, but the way it was described to me was that one group was supportive of people paying for WinMX, one group wasn't, and Vladd was somewhere in between.  In any case, it was Vladd's version of pie that I started out with, and for some reason I was talked into changing it into the pie group's version 3.4 pie, along with using Peer Guardian.  That seemed to work fine for a while, but I started falling out of chat rooms.  After putting up with this for a couple of weeks, I finally got tired of being invited rooms and not being able to go and asked for advice from someone whom I trust.  That person told me about your site, where I downloaded 3.54 with your modification - whatever that is.

Now that I have 3.54 on my computer from you, everything works fine, except that MX keeps shutting down while I am asleep, and I don't know why.

I know that pie changed a system file called hosts, because my virus scanner (AVG) told me that happened.  I later learned that it was supposed to do that. However, recently AVG crashed when I got dropped out of a room, so I have no idea if my hosts file if when I uninstalled WinMX 3.53 and pie if my hosts file was returned to normal.  I frankly doubt it.

So now I have no anti-virus software on my computer.  I can't get WinMX to work for any extended period of time, and I apparently have some kind of spyware hijack thing on my computer that is probably something that happened on WinMX (since that is all I use this computer for) product (PCPitstop's "Exterminate") thinks I am running GoToMyPC or PCAnywhere on my computer, but I never installed that program here.  I just did a fresh wipe and reload right before I started all of this, and now I am afraid I am going to have to do it again before I can fix whatever is wrong.  If so, I will probably never install MX again, because I can't afford to spend all of this time dealing with some ghost issue all because a few people on WinMX can't get along.  I would rather just use torrents and do without whatever I can't find there.  I don't want to do that, because MX has a lot of files here that I can't find in torrents anywhere, so I am hoping that someone here can help me get through this.

So, as I said in my title....HELP!

Thanks!


TrainTheK9

[Me Here]

OK, wow.. first off..lots of good information into your issues and what you have done thus far.

First of all let me say that i totally understand your confusion and doubts about everything.  Often we try to keep things as non political as possible here and so let me just say.. The real issues that divide are these  Vladd44 is profiting from scamming users in two ways.. ads on site next to downloads that are free.. confusing folks. and at one time had the audacity to add a pay pal button to site.
Our differences with the Gem side and Vladd too in the beginning was their refusal to help keep the netwrok safe by blocking the RIAA and companies that cause damage..

All that said its just FYI and wont fix you so lets get on to the actual help.

Im not entirely sure whats causing your MX to shut down over nite.   I am wondering if you ever uninstalled Peerguardian, and also curious if PGLite was ever installed on your system.. could either of those do this. Yes.  Do you need either one. No.
Remove those if you have them.

Are you running WinMX in Primary mode?  If so please try as a secondary and see if you continue to get the shut downs over nite.  I assume one nite running will tell us if its a everynite problem.

Do you use Leechammer or MXMonitor?  If so run without those also over night to test.  They are known to cause memory leaks that if untreated (so to speak) can cause MX to freeze up.. lag.. or crash.

Do you get an error message for Microsoft, or do you simply wake up and WinMX is off?

Having this issue on a semi regular basis could be a clue to the reason.. is there an Antivirus program that is updating every 24 hours, scheduled at nite, is there anything like that?
Peeguardian updates once a day.. well q/24 hours so this could be the cause as well.. not for sure.

As for your AVG.. recently Ive seen two ppl with issues where that clapped out on itself,  What i Suggest is to make sure you have the latest version and reinstall it, its usually quite benign with WinMX and they work well together.  If you dont like AVG for some reason AVAST is a great alternative and is also free.  Both links to the sites can be found on the links .. link.. located on the right top of this screen.

Pie and frankly our first WinMX fix was in the host file.  Hosts file are a system file and are the primitive way of doing DNS for websites.  Now however, its not used for this and because of its purpose its famous for being hit when a browser hijacker wants to redirect you.  We have a clean Microsoft Install of the hosts file that i can get you a link to, if you want to make sure yours is not got anything strange added in.
Its also important to note here that many programs (again due to the nature of the purpose of the file) write protect your hosts file so that you 'dont' get hijacked.  This can also be a problem if WinMX has tried to access it to make changes.. (for example both pie and WinMX Group Patch make an entry for the Update Bar on WinMX) and so if your running programs like SpywareBlaster then its probably protecting your Hosts file.  Thats not all bad, however if you want to make changes to the Hosts file its best to do those (again so installing the WinMX Group Patch would count here) with that SpywareBlaster off.  Then restart when the install is complete.  This would at least ensure your WinMX entries where correct.

As for that program not updating .. Im not sure about that.. I would reinstall it and see if this helps.  Its definitely possible to get a virus file on WinMX,  thankfully its really really rare.. but we do always tell folks to run a scan on files before you run them or share them.. especially any exe or program files. 

TrainThek, I just want to say I understand your frustrations, but I cant fix your problems more then likely, in this one post, so I hope you have just enough nerves and patience left to give WinMX and us a chance to make it a better experience for you.

*EDIT* one more note TrainThek, the reason you see traffic after WinMX is shut down is simple enough, I suspect this also means your are indeed running in primary mode.  One thing is the RIAA and fake file flooding companies.  One thing you will see (when not using WinMX Group Patches) is them trying to connect to you many hours after you no longer have WinMX running.  This is typical for them and its probably somthing that you wont see as much of if your on our Patch.  Second thing is secondary clients that have recieved your WinMX information as a possible primary on the network.  They store this so that when they go offline they have a quicker connection time.  Its hard coded into WinMX and its normal activity also.  But its not dangerous or malicious like the fake flie flooding is.  might expain tho why you see continued activity after WinMX is closed.

[J a M e S]

oh bugga... didnt mean to do that.. long story.. cud u delte my post

sorry


*edit by nylly: deleted the post as per your wishes

[TrainTheK9]

OK.  Let me answer some of your questions - questions that I should've anticipated and answered in the first place.  Sorry about that.  I meant to eliminate a lot of those variables so that you would not be forced to guess at things as much as you are having to.  In any case, here ya go...

1.  Peer Guardian 2 and PG Lite at one time or another have been installed on this computer (because of all of the different versions of advice I have gotten here), but neither are currently installed, nor will they ever be installed again after what I have learned here.  I believe Peer Guardian 2 may have been installed at the time that MX was shutting down, but I am certain it was shut down (although I can't speak for any background program it might have had running while I had the application shut down.)

2.  I do not have MXMonitor or LeechHammer currently installed, but I would like to once all of this is cleared up.

3.  Yes, I am on a primary connection.  I tried a secondary to see if it was more stable, as some people mentioned it might be.  That made it worse, not better.  Although I understand the explanation about other users having my IP address stored as a primary connection, I must say that I have been running a primary connection for the last month or so, and the symptoms of a constant connection after WinMX has not been the case after it was shut down until only recently.  Therefore, whatever is going on that is causing continued connectivity after WinMX is shut down, I am not sure that your explanation is it.  Maybe, but I doubt it.  On this same issue, I should also tell you that while no software firewall is currently installed, I am on a LAN behind a LinkSys router/firewall, and I am certain it is properly configured.  To be sure that the connectivity was not happening from one of the other computers on the LAN (since this computer is my file-sharing server on the network), I did shut all of the other computers down. The continued connectivity remained.  Once all of this is figured out and resolved, I would like to run a software firewall on this computer (unless you recommend against it) since I would like all of the protection I can get against the potential of other WinMX users screwing with my computer.

4.  AVG was still currently installed at the time, but certain aspects of it that used to run were no longer running because they go screwed up somewhere along the way in all of this.  However, I believe that you are right in the fact that it does update during the night.  Obviously I want this feature, so I hope you are not telling me that I will not be able to run WinMX and AVG at the same time.

5.  No, there was no Microsoft error message.  The program was simply shut down.  When I first sit down at the computer, the botton is gone from the Task Bar, but the icon remains in the systray until I have over it, then it disappears.

6.  The issue that is intermittent is not the shut down.  Shutting down on its own happens every night, now that your version of the patch and WinMX 3.54 was installed.  (Note that I only started using 3.54 when I started using your patch.  Before that I only used 3.53).

7.  I am probably two or three stops beyond being merely computer literate, which is to say that I understand and fully comprehend pretty much everything you said in your post. However, dealing with the hosts file is definitely beyond my field of expertise.  I am comfortable that I could follow instructions on installing a fresh one, and yes, I would like to have a link from you to get a fresh copy of that file so that I can be sure that there are no remnants of the alterations from pie.

8.  One final fact that you might need to be aware of (although it might merely be a coincidence) is this:  When I was just starting to try to figure all of this out, I was trying to get help from one of the rooms on the internet.  It was not a help room, but it was a room that I used to frequent back when the winMX site was still up.  There was a user there who did not know me who apparently got very impatient with all of my questions.  Ultimately he apparently booted me out of the room.  Before this, I was not having the problems I described to you now, including falling out of chat rooms on a regular basis.  On the other hand, I think I also followed some of that idiot's advice, although now I couldn't tell you exactly what it was anymore.  I think one of the things might have been to install PG Lite and install PG2.

***************************************

I have the patience to keep following this through to its conclusion - especially if it helps me avoid yet another wipe and reload - as long as you are willing to continue to work with me on this.   From your post I gather that you seem to be a pretty detail-oriented" person like me, so I believe that our interaction with one another would ultimately result in isolating the problem.  I think the question really ends up being whether being whether or not YOU have the patience to keep working with me on this until we get all of this resolved, especially since I am a new member of your site and not part of the "in" crowd who is up to speed on all of the political things happening with all of the different WinMX factions.  I hope that I will find that you do, in fact, have the patience for helping me with this.  I an assure you that if it turns out that you can stick with me through this, I will stick with you - and with WinMX. I like the program and I like the community, so I really want to see this work out.

One final note:  I would like more details on both the RIAA and fake flooding companies as well as the specifics of the politics between the factions, including all of the patches and pies and whatever else there has been since the WinMX site shut down, so that I can have all of the facts in front of me.  I did notice that you left a link regarding the RIAA and fake flooding companies above, so I will read up on that. However, if you have links on this site (or other sites) giving me more details on what has happened, I would like to have those.  If not, please send me an email with the details.  I know it's probably a lot of information and you probably have a lot of other things going on, but if you could accommodate me on this I will certainly do what I can to make it worth your while in terms of my contribution to this site and to the WinMX community as a whole.

Thanks for taking the time for your very detailed response.  I really do appreciate the details.

Regards,


TrainTheK9

[Me Here]

Ok TrainThek,

Let me start by saying I am probably the 'most' patient person you will encounter, dare I say in almost all of WinMX? ..lol

I do still have some questions about some of the problems you're encountering, for example when you mention trying the secondary connections you say "That made it worse, not better.". Which Leads me to wonder if you are having more then just the nightly disconnection issue here. If so it might be a good idea for you to explain to me what your exact definition of "I can not get MX to work right anymore.." so that we can be sure to get you running correctly.

In lu of that at this time however I want to answer a few of your questions and get started on the instructions I would like you to follow regardless of any other issues you maybe having that are unclear to me.

About 3 > I would be happy to supply you more information about anything I'm capable of explaining, as for this continued connections after WinMX is off, I hope that in reading that link I gave you about the Damage Caused By Flooding you might have a bit better understanding of how they attempt or do connect to a Primary user.  The WinMX Group patch works very well in keeping them from Establishing a connection to you, however, nothing is going to keep them from attempting that connection to you.  The exact mechanisms they use for detecting Primary Node information is not known, and the true damage is not in attempts to connect but once that is established.  Why you are just now seeing it I cant really answer however, I don't feel its malicious on your side of things or from your WinMX.
Running a software firewall is a choice, most users do have some kind of one installed.  I myself don't really use one often.  I have sygate installed and only use it when I'm concerned about programs dialing home and want to block that activity.  I allow the Firewall that is in the router do its job, and I think most of them do a better job then any software one could. Again this is my opinion and I think that's something you should decide for yourself, I can tell you that I have never known anyone to truly have their machines messed with by other users unless they actually downloaded and installed a Trojan.  Even then its very rare, we always encourage folks to run Antivirus and have it to scan all files.  I'm not saying your 100% safe from it but its very very rare if you don't have Remote access enabled with weak or no passwords, to just get it because you have opened two ports for WinMX to use is well, I've never heard of it happening.

About 4 > No I'm not saying you should not run Antivirus and AVG is a good one we recommend it, I'm looking for coincidences however, in order to diagnose the problems and get you back on track enjoying WinMX. My suggestion was simply to make sure your running the latest version (free one is fine) and reinstall it if its been acting odd.

About 6 > Again this almost suggests the shut down is not the only issues your having and would be nice to know before i comment here.

About 7 > I'll post this last.

About 8 > I truly suspect that the original problems may have been from Peerguardian, again suspect is the best I can do, and we have no choice but to move forward with what we are sure of.  I don't think this person would have been an issue for concern. But installing the PG and (I'm going to consider here) possibly the Pie patch could have started this mess. or started the avalanche so to speak.

I would be more then happy to get you any info, links I can about the last comments you made, regarding the shut down, riaa, and differences between the two patches as that relates to 'politics' which i use that term lightly because to be honest, I don't fee for the most part our requests, pleading and suggestions are politically motivated but i do think some of theirs have been.  In any case.. you can get my versions of them but that will take a bit of time.  I'll try to work something up for you and get back to you on that.

For now however I would like you to do the following for me:

At some point in this post back to me a description of what your exact issues are with WinMX just not acting right, so that I can be sure to address them all.

Hosts file:
1. Download this file Original Microsoft Hosts File.zip Save it to the PC where you can find it.
2. If your running SpywareBlaster in a constant (in the background) state, or any other spyware type of protection turn them off.
3. Unzip the file you have downloaded to your C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\hosts folder.
4. Manually follow that location, open your My Computer > Windows folder > system32 folder > drivers folder> etc folder > and make sure that you have only one file named  Hosts. 
There are others that could be there named things like MSNHosts, hosts.txt, SamHosts  etc.  Notice the names are slightly different.  There should be only one named      hosts      no file ext. 
What you going to do is make sure you don't have one named hosts(1) meaning that something has write protected the original you had and the new unzipped one is now named hosts(1) instead of overwriting the one you had.
We want the unziped one to be the only Hosts file you have named that way. 
5. If you do see hosts and hosts(1) or are unsure you can open these files and look at the contents easily.
   a.  Right click the file, and choose Open.
   b.  A box will open prompting you to either use IE to open it or to select a program.  Choose Select a Program to open.
   c.  When the list appears scroll down for Notepad, select it, make sure the 'Always Use This Program to Open this type of file is NOT ticked.  and say OK
   d.  There should only be one entry under the lines prefixed with '#' marks.  That is 127.0.0.1 | Local Host.  Our Patch does add an entry for the Update bar to be present but the original hosts file, Ive asked you to download and unzip to there should not have any WinMX entries.  We are starting fresh here.

WinMX:
1. Make a note of your usual locations for your Incoming and shared folders, and the ports you are currently using on WinMX.
2. Remove any WinMX version you have on the computer, you can either do this by the Add/Remove in Control Panel or you can do this by simply deleting the C:\Program Files\WinMX folder while its off.
3. Download (if you don't still have the installer) this file:
WinMX Multi Version Installer with Patch
This file is larger but it has WinMX v3.53 or v3.54 and you are welcome to use either for this.
4. Once its finished downloading and you have made sure the other version is removed completely (including any desktop shortcuts or start menu ones for manual removal) Double click this file to begin installations.
5. You will be asked to choose a version of WinMX, choose which ever one you would prefer to keep, it will have v 3.54 ticked by default as its generally the most stable release.
6. If you use ports that are not default ports (6699 TCP and 6257 UDP) when the installation gets to the TCP and UDP connectivity it may fail, if the test fail or you would prefer set them up manually at this point that should be fine.  Just so we get the same settings as you had before.
7. Be sure you have the same files for Incoming files selected for this version.
8. Feel free to restart the spyware programs at this point.
9. Once its set up and running Id like you to keep all current incompletes you had off the screen and not allow them to find sources for at least 48 hours.

Now once this is done.. and up and running .. let it run.. and lets see how we do.  If anything here is unclear feel free to ask before proceeding ..

[Mick832]

"the specifics of the politics between the factions, including all of the patches and pies and whatever else there has been since the WinMX site shut down, so that I can have all of the facts in front of me."

I think this could be covered in about a 12 volume book.   As one who was a semi regular on Vladds site and also this site, I tried not to get involved in the politics of whose patch was better, but you could not help but see the posts on both forums.   As far as help goes, Me Here was always able to offer help to people who were using Pie, without insisting that Pie was crap and needed to be removed.   She would try help people regardless of where they sat "politically".

All I can suggest is forget all the history, and just see if Me Here can get you connected and running properly.

[Me Here]

wow Mick.. thanks hun for that.. 

[TrainTheK9]

Mick,

Thanks for the advice.  I fully intend to follow her advice to the letter, and to see this through to the end, whatever that may be.  I have already decided to move forward with her advice, and my gut tells me the same thing you are telling me, that she will give me an honest effort in helping me clean up this mess, even though there is nothing in it for her except satisfying her desire to help others (which I honestly feel a little guilty about).  However, I suspect that it was blind faith that got me into this mess in the first place.  I don't want the background information in order to decide whether or not to follow her advice; I have already made up my mind to do so.  I want the information so that the next time someone else decides to give me advice about uninstalling her version of WinMX and returning to one of these other solutions, I can speak intelligently about why it is best for me not to do so rather than merely answering "because Me Here said so".  lol

TrainTheK9

[Me Here]

Thanks TrainThek,

I'll be waiting to hear from you about the results of any questions as you proceed ... I do get plenty of satisfaction from the successful help and am a teacher in my heart so I fully understand wanting the facts.. in fact I'd say that's part of our philosophy here in general.. give you those as we know them to be true and let you decided whats the best course for you...

[TrainTheK9]

Me Here,

First, please allow me to thank you for taking the time to help me get to the bottom of this.  If it is ever the case that you end up sitting around wondering why you spend so much time, effort and energy helping people like me, please remember that I, for one, greatly appreciate your selfless act of helping me without asking anything in return.  I know that sounds a little "corny", but we live in a world where that kind of selflessness is a rare thing, and should therefore never be taken for granted.  Enough said.

I will follow your advice, but before I do, I thought I should give you the following information, and then have you advise me as to whether or not doing what you mentioned is even necessary.

In the folder you mentioned (C:\WINNT\system32\drivers\etc) there are 5 files.  These files are:

hosts
networks
protocol
services
lmhosts.sam

Does this sound right?  Do you want to know the content of one or more of these files?  If so, please let me know.

The contents of the hosts file are as follows:

207.210.117.53   www.winmx.com

Is this right?

Regarding the exact problem that I am experiencing, let me clarify my statement, and then give you an update.

First, regarding the network activity with WinMX shut down, it is not that I did not notice it was happening before.  It is that it was NOT happening before. Had it been happening, I assure you that I would have noticed.  Also, being behind a firewall which is what actually carries my public IP address, if other computers are trying to connect to me, I wonder if that network activity would make it all the way to the local computer behind the firewall, or actually stop at the firewall since that is where the IP address is.  Perhaps you could clarify that.

Regarding the activity itself, I don't have MRTG or anything on this computer to be able to tell exactly how much bandwidth is being used with WinMX off, but a lot of packets are being transferred with nothing going on, and the icon for the network connection is lit up 99.9 % of the time.  Obviously, I find this disconcerting.  I have tried disabling the connection, waiting for a minute or so, and then re-enabling it.  This seems to have an effect, as though it is trying to reconnect but can't.

I have run every scan I can think of on this computer over the last couple of days. Spyware Blaster is enabled and up to date.  Spybot says nothing is wrong.  Ad-Aware says nothing is wrong. All of the online scans say nothing is wrong except Panda, which says I have 150 different kinds of spyware on the computer, and then wants me to spend money to fix it.  I don't know what to believe.

After running all of those scans, I reinstalled the latest free version of AVG (I had the latest installed, by the way), and the install was successful.  The AVG scan found nothing wrong, either.

As I type this, WinMX has been running for almost 24 hours without crashing.  However, I found that I had dropped both chat rooms I was parked in.  Last night, I found that I was dropping rooms a lot, but not nearly as often as I was before I installed your version of WinMX 3.54.  I suspect that this might be due to running out of bandwidth, since I came back to the computer to find 27 downloads running - something I obviously try to avoid.

On the subject of bandwidth, perhaps it might be good for you to know that for some reason, even though I have 896 Kbps available to me (up and down), WinMX seems to feel a limit at 100 Kbps.  No matter how many uploads and/or downloads I have going, the bandwidth meter never goes past that.  Bandwidth throttles are set at 10,000,000 incoming and 50,000,000 outgoing, per the suggestion of someone in a help room I found once.  Throttle process interval is set at 100.  Since WinMX seems to be using only a fraction of the bandwidth available to me, it doesn't make sense to me why WinMX would always cap out at the 100 Kbps line.  In any case, I wonder if any of this could be at least part of my problem.

OK.  I will wait to hear back from you on this post before I follow through with your instructions.

Thanks again for all your help.

TrainTheK9

[Me Here]

Hi TrainThek,

Sorry for the delays..

As far as I can tell your Host file looks fine as does the list of files in the 'etc' folder.  However most Hosts file do contain a entry for your local host:

127.0.0.1   localhost

If you want to add this or not is up to you, I believe I am not the best person to explain its uses on a system but it seems more useful for things like being able to enter rooms on WinMX you host from your local host, browsing yourself etc.. connections to your Local Host machine without having to travel through the Wan to do it.

Other then this I would skip the steps of adding a Original Microsoft Hosts file.  The sole entry you have there now is the WinMX Group Patch one for the update bar.



About the network Traffic, let me rephrase what I meant, I have no doubt you would have noticed it before, I should have said 'I'm not sure why your just now seeing it happen to you.'  As in why they haven't found you earlier.  I would like you to come visit me in the Chat room at

WinMxWorld.com Help_E3D7EFD50D3D

I have a file I'd like to share with you that will help you to monitor the activity and is simple to install and run.

I think the Panda scan is telling you shite.. your AVG and your Adaware I trust 100%.  Don't worry I really don't think your system is anything but clean.. just odd settings or installations.. and having the AVG installed and working great makes me feel better as well.

I have heard that 'advice' your saying about the bandwidth throttles and I think its BS.. really.. it makes no sense when I know what little I do about how WinMX works.. So my best advice about the Bandwidth is this NEVER limit incoming bandwidth and if your want the best outgoing limits please visit his url with WinMX off.. (after we get you working well that is, which maybe now if your not crashing Id wait until you do to reinstall actually.. lol)

Test Script and set up Help   - Because this actually runs a test of your Upload speeds then makes recommendations its best done with WinMX and other programs using Internet Off.
Here is another good explanation of WinMX, its an older archived article that was the Bible of WinMX for years..
About Bandwidth Limiting
Actually have a look through that site.. tons of interesting information there and most of it still applicable to WinMX.

Ok for now that's about it.. I think you might should wait to reinstall.. I think for a crash or mysterious shut down.. and I think you should get your Bandwidth set correctly for your WinMX.. and test that a while..

Let me know if you have any other questions TrainThek...