WinMX Freezes Up

Many people have problems with WinMX Freezing up or GUI problems, meaning that parts of the interface and screens become unreadable.  This like many issues regarding WinMX can have a few known causes, we'll go over the main ones here.


High CPU Usage
One of the main causes of WinMX becoming 'unresponsive' is high CPU usage related to the program itself or to other things happening on the computer.  We'll talk about the ones related to WinMX itself only here in detail, but it's fair to mention that if you're having issues with programs and WinMX is causing high usages then be sure your WinMX is running in secondary mode, not primary, when you're using other high resource programs with WinMX.

Running WinMX in primary mode is not always all it's made out to be.  Some users get the impression that it's somehow magically better than running in secondary mode, and for some users it is better however, there is a lot to be said for using a well configured secondary as well especially if you have an older slower computer.  WinMX requires you to have at the least a 266MHZ processor to run primary because you not only run your WinMX environment but many intensive processes for Network Traffic and for Secondary users on your program.  If you have less then this or even a slower machine, then running secondary can actually make your WinMX experience better.


Unprotected Primary Causing Freezing Up
The second most common cause of freezing up is running an unprotected primary on the network.  These days if you have been around many of the help sites or the chat rooms on WinMX you have surely heard that the RIAA/MPAA have hired companies to disrupt your WinMX experience, by flooding the network with fake files.  These companies have designed software to allow themselves to connect to you via secondary and flood in the fake file data.  This can cause problems for you when you have other secondaries within your network area searching for files that match this, and can also cause problems for you when these companies are using you and your network resources (yes this means your bandwidth) to carry out this illegal DOS attack on you.  The best fix for this is to make sure you're using the latest WinMX Community Patch that blocks this software from connecting to you and also blocks out these mass floodings of results as secondaries search.  Leaving you to have a faster more efficient WinMX system.
WinMX Community Patch


Third Party Programmes Causing Freezing Up
Another common cause of freezing up is the use of MXMonitor or Leechammer.  Often with extended use of these programs folks notice that it causes WinMX to become slow or freeze up.  If you're having this issue it's best to restart everything and see if it helps, if this helps then you may want to restart MxMoni or Leechammer at least every other day to avoid this. If this doesn't help then there may be other issues for your freezing up and it's best to continue without these programs until you find and fix your problem.


Graphical User Interface (GUI) Problems
WinMX has another issue that some experience, that goes hand in hand often with the freezing up problem and that is GUI (Graphical User Interface) issues.  You will see parts of your WinMX boxes faded out and white, with parts missing.  There are a couple of reasons you may have this problem, it boils down to being a leak in the memory in 'GDI Resources'.  To check this click 'Ctrl + Alt + Delete' to bring up the Task Manager box, Select the 'Processes' Tab, click the 'View' Option, then 'Select Columns'.  Now enable the column for GDI (Graphical Device Interface) Objects by ticking it, and say OK.  If your WinMX.exe is consuming 9999 then this is likely the issue for you.

There are a couple of things to check on to resolve this:

First make sure you're using the latest WinMX v3.54 b4 Version.  
Second make sure you have Leechammer off, as this is a common factor.  You may be better off with MXMonitor if this cures it.  
Third thing is a patch that is from Microsoft and is ONLY to be used if the above doesn't work and you're a Windows XP Service Pack 2 user. You can get that from here:
WindowsXP-KB319740-v5-x86-ENU.exe
Note: Just to warn you microsoft classes this patch as unstable and not to be used unless you really need to.
Fourth thing to try would be to uninstall your Video drivers and reinstall them.


If you continue to have problems after trying the above please visit the forum and post your
information so we can look at the issues.
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