Tracker Status 'Not working'

[suomynona]

Hello folks,

I am really desperate now and that's why I decided to register here to ask for help. 

At first some kind of prologue:
Until two days ago I could properly use/download different torrents (also through magnet links) for decades. Now, all of a sudden, that does not work anymore! At first I was using uTorrent but after the EpicScale issue I changed to qBittorrent yesterday. So the problem I have already occured with uTorrent and now keeps on bothering me with qBittorren as well.

Now the actual problem:
If I click on the magnet link (which as stated before ALWAYS worked until two days ago!) the window with the metadata appears BUT with no metadata at all.
The Torrent Information (size/comment/date) is 'Not available'
Beneath it says 'retrieving metadata'

I read in a topic that one should just let it load and afterwards press OK, but it won't load, no matter how long I keep that window open before pressing 'OK'. It's not that I kept that window open for more than an hour or so but for a good amout of minutes at least!

If I then proceed by pressing 'OK' the Status of the Torrent is still 'Downloading metadata' while the Tracker tab says the following:
** [DHT] **    working
** [PeX] **    working
** [LSD] **    working
0 udp://open.demonii.com:1337/announce  (at first I get) Updating,  (then I get) Not working

All of these have 0 peers.


With other torrents/trackers it is the same. APART FROM those Slackwave torrents I've already read about. These torrents (or at least the one Slackwave torrent that I tried) did work although there was only 1 (http) tracker working. But at least one was working!


Although I am a real noob with torrents I think I did not miss any of the general requirements of using torrents - of course, I have an exception for qBittorrent in my Firewall just as I had two days ago. I also read something about messing around with ports within the router (and I did not do that because I have no idea what to do) but that was NOT NECESSARY (as stated before, because I can't repeat that enough, it was working until two days ago without me having to make anything with ports within the router). I did not change anything in comparison to the working status of two days ago. At least nothing that is (to me) directly connected to torrents.

This site (sitedown.info/open.demonii.com:1337) says that the site is down as it does with all the other trackers that are 'not working' for me. Unfortunately the one (http)tracker (from the Slackwave .torrent) is down too, according to that website so I am not sure if this site is telling the truth.

But apparently all the other users (or at least the ones that uploaded that torrent) can still download with these trackers. Here REMOVED please do NOT link to copyrighted content is one of the magnet links that are not working for me anymore.

So why the hell have I lost the ability to download torrents ALL OF A SUDDEN?!

I have Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit (not yet activated) with SP1.
Between the last working torrent and above mentioned mess lies the installation of the Service Pack 1 so maybe it is because of that?! I also cleaned the Registry with CCleaner but I am pretty sure I did that AFTER the torrent clients stopped working (in order to solve that problem - yes I know I am a noob but I didn't know what to do).

My connection status is yellow, saying 'no direct connections. this may indicate network problems.'
'Always announce to all trackers' is already checked.

I also did uninstall and reinstall, I even redownloaded qBittorrent v.3.1.12 and installed again, deleted all the torrents, put them back, redownloaded them etc.

Can anyone please give me some advice? I am really desperate by now and although I didn't know what to do from the beginning, in the meantime I know even less...

help



EDIT:

I found one .torrent file (no magnet link!) that has the exact same results as described above with the exception that the first window does show a size and a comment (so metadata loading was successful) and with pressing 'OK' instead of 'downloading metadata' I get 'stalled'.
So apparently the metadata issue is connected to magnet links but the trackers 'not working' issue persists.

[ciaobaby]

If the connection status icon is 'yellow' you have no incoming connection capability, so your client cannot connect to other peers (or trackers).

Fix that first, by changing your listening port so something other than 6881 (the default)

Options -> Connection.

[suomynona]

Hello,

first of all sorry for that link, won't happen again. Just wondered if other people had the same issue with that magnet.

I changed the listening port  and restarted for a couple of times now and nothing changes. Should the colour of the connection status change immediately or after restarting?

I also enabled 'use different port on each startup' and restarted over and over again.

Yesterday I found a torrent link which worked for me although it was very very slow (only 1 seed, 2 peers = 36 days remaining). I can't remember seeing the colour of the connection status having changed.

What leaves me most confused is the fact that three days ago it worked just fine with all those torrents...what could have caused this? I also tried downloading on my very old XP notebook (but with the same LAN wire that I use for my actual notebook) with the same results.


EDIT:

Oh and I just noticed that when I restart qBittorrent the [LSD] tracker has 2 peers for a very short time which vanish very fast to 0 peers.

[ciaobaby]

Just wondered if other people had the same issue with that magnet.

I checked before deleting and it threw an error, but using the hash_info only, it loaded up and  found peers on DHT, (got to 15 before I deleted it). if your listen port is 'firewalled' DHT will most likely not happen.

Should the colour of the connection status change immediately or after restarting?

That would depend on if your router supports UPnP/NAT-PMP and qBT was able to forward the port, The execution log will tell you this.

[suomynona]

How do I use the hash_info only?

I don't exactly know if my listen port is firewalled but qBittorrent has an exception added in the firewall so this might do the trick as well?!

My execution log says:

Code: Select all

09/03/2015 13:54:44 - UPnP/NAT-PMP: Port mapping failure, message: could not map port using UPnP: unknown UPnP error
09/03/2015 13:54:44 - UPnP/NAT-PMP: Port mapping failure, message: could not map port using UPnP: unknown UPnP error
09/03/2015 13:54:44 - qBittorrent is successfully listening on interface :: port: TCP/33059
09/03/2015 13:54:44 - qBittorrent is successfully listening on interface 0.0.0.0 port: TCP/33059
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - 'ABOVE MENTIONED MAGNET LINK' added to download list.
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - Options were saved successfully.
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - Embedded Tracker [OFF]
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - Encryption support [ON]
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - Local Peer Discovery support [ON]
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - PeX support [ON]
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - DHT support [ON], port: UDP/33059
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - Anonymous mode [OFF]
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - HTTP user agent is qBittorrent v3.1.12
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - UPnP / NAT-PMP support [ON]
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - qBittorrent is trying to listen on any interface port: TCP/33059
09/03/2015 13:54:43 - Peer ID: -qB31C0-

I found an option controlling this UPnP/NAT issue in my router, enabled it once (it was yesterday I think) and the red 'UPnP/NAT-PMP: Port mapping failure, message: could not map port using UPnP: unknown UPnP error' was gone and replaced by something blue that indicated a working UPnP/NAT.
But 1) this didn't change anything of the Tracker 'not working' issue and 2) I never had to do that before and 3) I read somewhere (maybe even in this forum) that this is not necessary or at least that people managed to download torrents even though they also had that error in their execution log.

[ciaobaby]

[qoute]How do I use the hash_info only? [/quote]

Copy the bt_ih= parameter from the magnet URL, paste it into the "Add link to torrent"  dialogue, click "[ Download ]".

[suomynona]

When I do that I also get the endless retrieving/downloading metadata and apart from those three grey 'working' trackers DHT, PeX and LSD I have no other (black) trackers.

-> still nothing... 

On the left side of the yellow connection status is: DHT: 0 nodes. Maybe that can help?

I am completely clue- and helpless.
I considered a reinstallation of my OS but I doubt that this would solve anything but maybe it was indeed the installation of the SP1 that did this?

Could it be that my IP got banned? I read that then there would be some kind of error message which I don't receive. Besides I really can't imagine why anyone would ban my IP, I was just downloading like anyone else!
Could it be the NSA preventing me from downloading?


What else could I try?

Any other users here having a similar issue?

And by the way, I really appreciate your help but at the same time I am very unhappy that nothing worked so far....

[ciaobaby]

On the left side of the yellow connection status is: DHT: 0 nodes. Maybe that can help?

Your connection is still not open, may be your local router, any firewall you are running or your ISP is blocking it. Until the port IS open and your client can contact DHT nodes, trackers and peers, nothing at all is going to start.

[suomynona]

Okay thank you.

As I did not change anything in the routersettings and as I only have the windows firewall running (with qBittorrent exception) it must be the ISP, correct?

Or is it possible that the router changed something itself? I guess not so that's why it must be the ISP right?

And if it is indeed the ISP there is nothing I can do apart from changing the ISP?

And from your experience, can you tell me: Is this blocking from ISPs a permanent thing or do they usually do that from time to time and unblock it eventually?

And if it is the ISP: Can they just block it for me or is every user using this ISP now blocked from downloading through torrents? I got SkyDSL by the way...

[Nemo]

Don't make yourself upset that you are being banned by your ISP (you probably can't use your internet if it was) or that NSA blocks you (really, they have better things to do) or anything else. It seems to me (as ciao also mentioned) that you are not reachable in order to download. Im not sure that if you are using any software firewall or internet security package of any kind which might be the problem as well.

If you log in into your router you can see it for yourself if its all set up correctly. ISP's tend to slow/block your any P2P actions depending on the country that you live in, especially the well known ports that are being used by torrenting. SkyDSL seems from Belgium, do you have a data limit of some sort? Your router can reset out of itself sometimes or restart because of several reasons. You can restart your router manually too which might fix it. You can try your current port if its open here: canyouseeme.org. If yes it will say Succes, of not it will fail.

I personally always prefer opening the port manually.

- If you are using a port of this range  6881-6889 change the port or click on ''Random'' within the settings nexto the port number in qBittorrent (if this is irrelevant skip this step).
- Log in to your router and open the correct port that you just changed. Make sure of this first which is an important one  (if this is irrelevant skip this step, but make sure that the port is open when you log in to your router).
- Once set up correctly open qBittorrent and see if the icon turns green. If yes its good.
- If not (yet perhaps) minimize qBittorrent then go to canyouseeme.org and put the port that you have set/changed and test again.

You can always try to download a Linux iso torrent file to see if it starts.

Let us know how it goes and we will look further from there.

[suomynona]

Thank you very much for the kind answer, I really appreciate that

I am indeed from Central Europe but not exactly from Belgium  (if it's necessary or useful to know where I'm located I will tell you)
and as a matter of fact it's quite late here so I won't try your steps right now but tomorrow or at the latest the day after tomorrow I'll try them and report the progress.

What I did try already was the canyouseeme.org where I tried several ports (i.e. 6881, 6891, 14231 and 33059) and all of them gave me the following result:

Code: Select all

Error: I could not see your service on 'my IP adress' on port (33059)
Reason: Connection timed out

Apart from that torrent issue I seem to have normal internet accessibility so I can't explain that connection timeout...

EDIT:

Oh and I just noticed something strange: In the left corner of my post I can apparently see my own IP but this is not the same IP that is shown on canyouseeme.org as 'Your IP'. It doesn't even resemble the one in the corner - not even close. So either I am a perfected noob or there's somethin else

[ciaobaby]

Turn the firewall OFF, if your machine is behind a NAT router the firewall is redundant in any case.

Check your external IP at whatsmyip.org

Check the qBT execution log at start up for the IP it is using to make sure they match.

Try a port in the "ephemeral range"  49152 – 65535

Then try canyouseeme.org again.

[suomynona]

Hm, there's indeed a NAT apparently...so what does this redundance of the firewall mean? That it is OFF in any case or that it can't be turned OFF in any case?

[ciaobaby]

The  purpose of a software firewall is to block unwanted or potential harmful intrusion attempts between two connected networks, and if your computer is directly connected to the Internet with an IP that is 'visible' to the Internet, your IP and therefore your computer and all the services and ports are exposed to the entire 'on line' world.

When you are behind a router that performs network address translation (NAT), your machine is given an IP that is 'non-rout-able' so is no longer visible from outside  your local network, and can only be reached IF you 'forward' (open) a specific port or range of ports to your internal IP for requests that are made to the external IP. All non-forwarded requests only go as far as the router, and as that has none of the services that are commonly being attacked the intrusion attempts will fail.

So a software firewall is only using resources on your machine with no benefit at all, because even if it reports something trying to "get out", it is too late, you are already 'infected'.

[suomynona]

Hello guys,

just wanted to give you a little feedback AND say thank you very much for all your kind answers and help!

All of a sudden it works again  just as sudden as it stopped working. It works with all the standard settings (e.g. through port 6881, with UPnP/NAT-PMP error, with 169 nodes and green connection status and last but not least working tracker status etc.) btw canyouseeme.org still gives the same error on port 6881!

I really don't know what happened, I can just assume that it had indeed something to do with the ISP as there was some checking due to my (not only my) very slow internet connection (something if it has anything to do with double NAT..., don't ask me, I have no idea!). Another idea is that it started working again through Windows Updates (had over 150 not yet installed and finally did it) although that does not sound plausible to me as it also worked before the above mentioned installation of SP1, so with even less updates.

But as a matter of fact I have one last question: Is it possible for the ISP to know that I am downloading via torrents? And even what I am downloading?