failed whois

[dabud]

Situation:  User is uploading from me at a good speed [approx 20 - 60 k]
               I do a whois and the response I get is "User offline or switched hosts."

Why is this?   I have tried many ways of getting an accurate response [clearing and making them come back in, etc], but I still get same response from doing a whois.

Is this a new wrinkle or a failure of Winmx?

[Me Here]

I can think of a few reasons this might happen. 

One being this user is on primary but has not got ports set up correctly.  Downloads would work like this however, how he would have found your files since searches wont work this way..
its possible this user had a partial file from you, got a new ISP or router and hasnt configured it.. WinMX will do a hash search for partial files and it would allow him to find you repeaditly even tho his other functions arent working..

I would say this person needs some help getting MX working correctly.. too bad you cant message them and send them here..

[Sophosaurus]

Do the whois from ul-window, not from hotlist.

WinMX doesn't update hotlisted user-ids when users switch host.
(the numbers at the end of the users name change which can be seen in ul-window only).

[KM]

if a user disconnects from the WPN and reconnects during an upload then the upload will still show their old ID (which if you try to whois, will show as offline)