Issue with bittorrent over wifi on T400 w/ Intel 5300

Everytime I try to download a file over bittorrent using a wifi connection, it seems to cut out after about 30 minutes. Once the connection dies, i cant do anything to restore it without restarting. The Access Connections program locks up and i manage the device using windows, either through the GUI or the command prompt. No issues using a wired connection.

Im using uTorrent with pretty conservative settings, much lower than any of my other wireless laptops or desktops.

Anyone else have this issue or any suggestions on how to fix it.

My wireless config is: Intel 5300, bluetooth and ATT WWAN card.

 

This is a guess, but try it and see:

In Access Connections, go to Tools->Global Settings and uncheck "Allow the wireless radio to be turned off when inactive"

 

That didnt fix it. still crashes after less than 30 minutes of downloading a large file. This is really frustrating because it takes so long to reboot just to restore the card. That makes it hard to troubleshoot.

 

Previous Intel Wifi drivers have had problems with DEP. Turning off DEP has helped in some cases.

 

Can you download a large file straight from the net?

 

Try limiting maximum connections. Windows sets a maximum connections limit. If you google it online you will find a way to increase the windows maximum, but I suggest you limit utorrent instead

 

that would be more a router problem, but yea try limiting max number of connections

 

I already disabled DEP, thanks though

Yep, i just tried downloading an ISO via ftp and http, couldnt replicate the problem. Reached about 150k over http and 400k over ftp.

This is what I originally thought, so I set it at 50 max connections with 4 upload slots, which is really low in my opinoin. The torrent i was downloading when it locked up only had less than 50 peers, both seed and leech.

The other 2 wireless PCs on my network have the global max set to 1000 and max per torrent is at 200. So I know its not an issue with my network, at least if it is its localized to the T400.

 

actually, i've had the same problem as the OP. the wifi has been locking up all evening and i just now pinpointed it to utorrent

anyways..if anyone has a solution that helps, i'm all ears. thanks~

 

Actually, the wifi locks up within 5 minutes of downloading something through utorrent. I even tried as low as 30 max global connections, so it shouldnt be the number of connections now.

My latest test peaked once at about 180 kbps, but for the most part ranged from 70-120kbps, which is very, very slow for my connection. Although it could have been a result of the limited number of connections. Other wireless computers can download over utorrent averaging around 150kbps and peak sometimes at 1.5mbps. I have a 4mb/300kb cable connection. purely wireless g network.

I thought that maybe if I just put the computer into hibernate mode, it would recover when turned it back on, but it didnt. So it seems it may be a software or OS issue.

Do you have the 5300 or another card? and anymore details you can provide on your setup?

 

Could you try a different bittorrent client? It would be interesting to know if this issue is specific to utorrent.

 

I will be, I just wanted to run a few more tests using utorrent first.

my last test set a limit of 20 max global. The interesting thing is that it ran for over an hour before the wifi connection locked up. The speed slowly increased to a steady connection of over 200kbps, then seemingly for no reason, with no spikes in the traffic it just died. Im planning one more test using utorrent. Im going to keep the connection limit to 20 and max the download limit to 200k

Edit: i think ill follow that up with a high number of connections and a low download limit

 

My last test result was surprising, limits were: 200k max download speed and 20 max global connections. The download ran for about 35 minutes and ranged between 50 and 75kbps, then just stopped.

 

I have not reinstalled my system for quite some while but I do remember that I had to patch the operating system (windows xp) because there was a very low limit on the number of concurrent connections allowed (to limit worms from spreading super fast).

I have a vague memory that the concurrency limitation sometimes caused problems when torrenting. Check your event log as the limiter (if it kicks in) will be shown as an event in the system log.

 

One thing I noticed on my T400 is that the wireless card is set to low-power mode even when you're on AC power. Maybe you could try going into Power Manager and setting it to "Maximum Performance," see if that helps?

 

Well I had thought of this and discounted it as a cause because I figured that this limit would effect both wired and wireless, but I will look into it more. Having done a bit more research, I just found out that vista home basic has a limit of 2, thats right, a whopping 2 maximum half open concurrent connection attempts per second. Even ultimate has a pretty low limit, something like 25. I don't know about patching it, but it seems to be a pain after SP1 as it needs a signed driver. I have been getting that event id (4226) in my logs, but it doesnt seem to correspond with any of the lockups.

Yeah, looks like it was set to max power savings, ill have to check it out.

 

This might be a utorrent issue, ive been running azureus all day with no problems. Tried to set all the connection settings the same and been averaging roughly 100KB/s with peaks at around 250KB/s. I even tried multiple torrents going at the same time.

Also, I did a little more research into my event logs, and the lockups did not match up with any of the 4226 errors.

Any suggestions on a lightweight bt client like utorrent? This new azureus is bloated to near AOL levels. I tried Arctic, but didnt like that at all.

 

i use to use bit tornado and it was pretty good. not bloaty and just a small little window pops up when you click a torrent link, still would use it but i havent DL anything in months lol

 

FWIW, I do my torrents on a “Real OS”—that doesn’t have artificial limits—and when they are done downloading, I copy them to my Microsoft knows best box .

Cheers.

 

hmm, thanks for the continued updates James. i have the 5300 wifi card as well..yeah..i was hoping that if you switched to a different bt-client, that it would be better. that's good news..

for what it's worth, i've been using vista on the desktop since it came out and have not had any problems with bt .. i dont think the number of concurrent connections thing has any bearing on this issue. it's got to be software related, possibly a driver or something on lenovo's side.. hopefully it gets fixed soon :/ it's pretty annoying, and other than that i dont really have any complaints about the t400

 

Ive been downloading iso's all day using azureus with no problems. I hope the bugs get worked out with whatever the problem is with utorrent because i really like that client.

 

I'm curious James, do you get an error message when your problem occurs saying that your network has "limited connectivity"? I received my T400 yesterday, and had been using it for more than 24 hrs without an issue. I installed Bittorrent this afternoon, and this evening I started losing my connection, as you described. Thinkvantage software does not function when this occurs, and I cannot detect any signals (for the record, my PC can detect over 8, and stays connected fine with my network).

Is this simply a Bittorrent issue? Do you know of a solution other than using Azerus? Anyone else have thoughts?

 

I've also had this issue (with the same hardware), where all wifi goes down. I can usually see 3 networks in the area, but all of a sudden I won't be able to see anything.

I have to restart windows, then go to the wifi tray icon and tell it to connect to a network. At this point it will tell me it doesn't see anything, and Vista (I uninstalled lenovo's 'access connections' program) has a 'diagnose' link, that tells me "Wireless capability on this computer is turned off" and has a button that says "Turn on wireless capability". After hitting that button, it's all fixed.

This makes me think Windows is somehow responsible, since it can 1) diagnose the problem, and 2) fix it.

edit: I should add that I had these problems shortly after using uTorrent and bitTornado.

 

I've played around with this problem a little more, and here's what I've found.

If I just run Bittorrent, there is no issue. I ran it for over six hours overnight, and did not lose my wifi connection. But, within three minutes of launching Firefox and having Bittrrent runing, I lost my connection. It seems like there is a correlation between Firefox and Bittorrent, but i have no clue what.

I've searched Google, and this is the only thread that comes up with anything resembling this problem, and no one seems to have a solution. I'm stumped.

 

I tested that theory, but it didn't pan out the same for me. I just opened utorrent and walked away (without ever opening firefox), came back an hour later and it was down.

 

It might be the Intel 5300 driver who could use some new drivers?

I have a t400 coming with a 5300 so I hope that there is a solution for that!

Good luck... I'll give you an update between 2 and 3 week!

 

I'll post an update.

I had figured that my brand new computer would ship with current drivers, but I was wrong. Updating to the latest Intel wireless drivers has seemed to help. I've been using Bittorrent for more than 12 hrs. now without any problems, and I also see a significant improvement in my N-network reception. If you are having this problem, I would suggest updating similarly.

 

Good call Generator - fixed things for me too. Thank you.

 

Hey guys, sorry for the lack of updates. Ive been out of town on business and didnt do any torrenting and didnt have any time for working on this problem. Good thing is that normal browsing and other internet tasks dont seem to have any effect on the card

Unfortunately the updated drivers didnt do anything for me, I have the latest drivers from intel and still have the problem. Did you guys get drivers from intel or lenovo?

Im having the notebook sent back for a screen replacement, so ill probably try to get them to replace the wifi card too and see if it was just a faulty card.

 

I downloaded the driver from Intel. The version number was 12.x something, while the dirver that came installed was 6.x something. I also downloaded the latest drivers for my router.

Its been about a week now and I haven't had any problems, its too bad yours is giving you issues. Good luck getting it fixed.

 

updating the driver worked for me to solve the same problem.