PeerGuardian Error Contacting URL
PeerGuardian is an IP (Internet Protocol) blocker for Windows which is highly popular in the file sharing community but also with security and privacy interested users. The software works by providing access to lists that contain IPs and IP ranges that are coming from organizations, companies, websites and individuals that invade the user's privacy, serve ads or malicious contents.
The main application of PeerGuardian is blocking P2P traffic from sources that are known to invade the users privacy by logging the actions on P2P networks.
A user trying to update the lists or download the lists initially after downloading PeerGuardian might encounter the message "Error Contacting URL" which means that there was a connection problem between the user's computer and the list. This is usually happening for the official lists hosted at Sourceforge.
The easiest way to overcome that error message is to find another source for that list and use that instead. PeerGuardian already provides access to the same list in the form of the level1 list on the Bluetack server. A selection of that should have the desired result.
Another option is to get the lists at the i-Blocklist website which mirrors them and provides access to several new lists that are not listed in the default PeerGuardian client.
Error Contacting URL can be a temporary error but if it is appearing continuously a user should think about switching to the alternative lists.
Update: Peer Guardian has been discontinued. The alternative is Peer Block which offers similar capabilities. The program has not been updated in a while. The latest stable release of the program dates back to 2010. Back in 2011 an announcement was made that a new version is underway, but that has been over a year ago. The program appears to be working fine for the most part though.
Update 2: Peer Block is not available anymore as well.
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And for those looking for a decent alternative that’s free and free from ads plus other crap (though I would recommend donating), then try qBittorrent: http://www.qbittorrent.org/
Why not use the portable version of uTorrent?
Just downlad the .exe from official website into a folder, create a text file in the same folder, rename the .txt file to settings.dat and start uTorrent. You can move the folder anywhere.
^Exactly…. in fact I would recommend avoiding all versions over 2.0, the torrent portion of the program hardly changed, it’s all the ads, ratings, and possible tracking features that require all the additional installs.
And this is why I never updated in a nutshell;
“Ads
More Ads (hit decline offer)
Even more ads (hit decline)”
Nope. I donated $25 several years ago to the utorrent crew.. possibly a decade… so I refuse to accept their reasoning for selling out so much.
You can turn off the ads.
qBittorrent FTW!
Qbittorrent your way out of this piece of crap.
+1 for Qbittorrent
I’m a long long time user of Bitcomet now and forever. Never any ads, no offers, nothing to decline, no sell out… little used due to the complex nature they still scare people away with, but their new install is a simple one click solution that discovers all settings on its own except firewalls.
They follow a simple idea…’share’… if you share you can possibly go faster than those who don’t share. You can even see connections* connected to you and of them who is sharing and who isn’t… then you can boot them / ban them or ignore them selectively ‘mwahahaha…’. We can set how much we share, with who, and how fast we share.
*in my personal experience over 95% of Azures and uTorrent users do not share, I boot them.
So those who believe Bitcomet is hard to understand, they haven’t been that since version 1.09a (current public release 1.35). Also Bitcomet installs a Firefox add-on to capture media from the temp directory. You can easily unload it using Firefox’s Add-on Options page.
Bottomline, Bitcomet is faster and easier to install/use. Signing up as a registered user will allow you to join the ranks as a sharing user. The more you share, the faster you can possibly go.
utorrent installs itself in appdata folder so it can inject malware without the UAC consent. Don’t use utorrent because it’s unsafe!
The best last version of utorrent is 2.2.1 build 25534