Many people use uTorrent and never actually set it up for their type of connection or needs. So here we are going to delve into it in a little detail to get you your way. Hopefully , you will be able to get faster and more reliable results with this information. Bear in mind, it is not supposed to be an exhaustive walk-through, but rather to suit novices.

Torrents? uTorrent?

Without being overly technical, I want to explain this in simple terms, explaining just enough for you to get going. A torrent is a really small file that contains the link back information to the original file/program/movie/show/album that you are looking to download.  The torrent file is conveniently label abc123.torrent.  The file contains the name and sizes and more importantly the location of the files out on the internets. FYI- downloading torrents is NOT illegal. Downloaded pirated software etc., is.
A magnet link – is and I quote Wikipedia:

Such a link typically identifies a file not by location or name, but by content; more precisely, by the content’s hash value.

Since it refers to a file based on content or metadata, rather than by location, a magnet link can be considered a kind of Uniform Resource Name, rather than the more common Uniform Resource Locators. Although it could be used for other applications, it is particularly useful in a peer-to-peer context, because it allows resources to be referenced without the need for a continuously available host.

As far as you and I are concern, its a faster, more direct way to download with peer to peer.

So first of all, download uTorrent here. Run through the setup installation accepting the defaults, except that last option. This  offers you the Ask toolbar. Make your own decision here bearing in mind that accepting it supports the free uTorrent. If you don’t like, uninstall it after.

Now we’ll get started

Start up uTorrent by clicking on its icon or find it in the start menu.

When it opens a one time only pop up appears called a speed guide. It is designed to help you choose your speed settings that will optimize the running of uTorrent. In the first dropdown box, you have a list of speeds that say xx/256, xx/512 etc.

You want to choose the one that suits your UPLOAD speed. I have a 7 meg line at home and an upload of 512. So I chose xx/512. You can choose accordingly.

Next is the port number. This is very important to get decent speeds. As you can see in the screen shot, it automatically chose 34999 for me. This is fine, however, I need to go to my router and create a port forward to my desktop/PC IP address for that particular port. Next Sunday, I will write about how to configure your router for port forwarding. When that’s done, I will update this post on getting a green icon in uTorrent. In the meantime, ask in the comments below and I will answer you.

Click use selected settings.

Now go to Options > Preferences.

Rather than me writing this out word for word, just follow the screen shots from here and copy each screen and make it identical to your setup. I will circle my changes:

Click the Associate Button and Start with Windows

Now head to UI Settings:

I like being able to double click files to start/stop them. Saves extra right-clicks

Move on to the directories tab:

Do this, because it makes finding and organizing everything a lot easier later on. However, these are up to you.

Now the connections tab, but you have this part done earlier.

The blue messy bit is my actual port. You chose this earlier.

Bandwidth Tab:

These are my settings. You can see my Upload is a max 10. This means it will upload slower, but won't choke your network so much. My download is 350 which allows me to still browse the net comfortably whilst downloading. This is on a 7 meg line. You need to reduce these according to your connection. If I had a 1 meg line, I would reduce my download speed to 50.

The rest of the settings are up to you. The queuing area is how many concurrent downloads will happen at once. If you leave that low, you generally have a better experience.

Hope you have fun with this and follow on to this post tomorrow on how to download a torrent and use it -

How To Download Movies And TV Shows Torrents

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