09-20-2007, 10:18 AM
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#1
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Owner
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Calgary
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Question on torrents ...
are they safe?
I thought I'd try one out, given to me by an office guy, and my XP went belly up the next day I fired my PC up. (HAL.DLL missing).
Managed to fix it through recovery, but is that the lay of the land for these things?
Are there safe torrents (executables to unwind them), or safer sources?
Thanks
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09-20-2007, 10:21 AM
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#2
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Lifetime Suspension
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: CP House of Ill Repute
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You could always run VMware and have a virtual machine that you use to run all your torrent stuff. If you ever have any problems, you can just delete the virtual machine and start over.
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09-20-2007, 10:23 AM
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#3
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Such a pretty girl!
Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Calgary
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The torrent file itself is safe. The files you download with that torrent file however you need to be aware of. Some have exe's with viruses, but most are legitimate as only the good torrents are usually seeded for periods of time.
__________________
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09-20-2007, 10:25 AM
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#4
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Director of the HFBI
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Calgary
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I have never had a problem with any of the torrents I have downloaded. Which client did you use? I use the client from bittorrent.com.
__________________
"Opinions are like demo tapes, and I don't want to hear yours" -- Stephen Colbert
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09-20-2007, 10:26 AM
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#5
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: in your blind spot.
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Bit torrent is just a way of moving files. Yes it is safe, but as with anything like this, you need to know if the files you receive are safe, and that all depends upon what you are downloading and from where.
HAL.DLL is your Hardware Application Layer. My guess would be that it was a coincidence that this went right after torrenting a file.
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
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09-20-2007, 10:27 AM
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#6
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Redundant Minister of Redundancy
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Montreal
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Just don't run any executables contained in the torrent you download and you should be fine. I've never had a problem with them.
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09-20-2007, 10:44 AM
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#7
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Scoring Winger
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No problems with torrents here either.. Can be pretty Hard drive intensive if you have a bunch of torrents running at the same time.. That might have caused a glitch in your hard drive, or revealed a few bad sectors that may have been a little sketchy to start with. Nothing to be afraid of from the torrents themselves or your torrent application.
________
Wife first black ####
Last edited by metal_geek; 05-06-2011 at 12:21 AM.
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09-20-2007, 10:53 AM
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#8
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My face is a bum!
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Azureus is a great client if you aren't liking the one you currently have.
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09-20-2007, 10:56 AM
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#9
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Supporting Urban Sprawl
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Quote:
Originally Posted by hulkrogan
Azureus is a great client if you aren't liking the one you currently have.
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The new Azureus is great in terms of functionality, but it had a bit of a memory footprint, but I only notice it on my school laptop.
__________________
"Wake up, Luigi! The only time plumbers sleep on the job is when we're working by the hour."
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09-20-2007, 11:17 AM
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#10
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Atomic Nerd
Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Calgary
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bingo
are they safe?
I thought I'd try one out, given to me by an office guy, and my XP went belly up the next day I fired my PC up. (HAL.DLL missing).
Managed to fix it through recovery, but is that the lay of the land for these things?
Are there safe torrents (executables to unwind them), or safer sources?
Thanks
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HAL.dll going has nothing to do with torrents. There was a system error and your hardware abstraction layer was basically corrupted, probably a bad shutdown or a power outage or some memory failure or registry corruption. A missing HAL.dll at startup is a common problem amongst Windows users.
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 09-20-2007 at 11:19 AM.
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09-20-2007, 11:23 AM
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#11
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: not lurking
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One of the best parts of the whole torrent system is a feedback loop... any torrent that's been out there for a while will be removed if it contains viruses on account of the users complaining about it; always read through the comment about a file on the torrent site; if it's got a lot of satisfied users and has been out for a while, it's probably a safe file.
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09-20-2007, 11:31 AM
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#12
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: in your blind spot.
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Bit torrent is just a way of moving files. Yes it is safe, but as with anything like this, you need to know if the files you receive are safe, and that all depends upon what you are downloading and from where.
HAL.DLL is your Hardware Application Layer. My guess would be that it was a coincidence that this went right after torrenting a file.
utorrent for the win!
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
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09-20-2007, 01:14 PM
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#13
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wins 10 internets
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: slightly to the left
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobblehead
Bit torrent is just a way of moving files. Yes it is safe, but as with anything like this, you need to know if the files you receive are safe, and that all depends upon what you are downloading and from where.
HAL.DLL is your Hardware Application Layer. My guess would be that it was a coincidence that this went right after torrenting a file.
utorrent for the win!
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definitely go with utorrent. gotta love a program that you don't even need to install to use
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09-20-2007, 08:34 PM
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#14
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Franchise Player
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Elbows Up!!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda
definitely go with utorrent. gotta love a program that you don't even need to install to use
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you can find this application by searching for "micro torrent" or "utorrent".
i use microtorrent too and it works great.
torrents themselves are nothing but a verified means for moving data through a network...its the content that can be bad. no different from an email.
__________________
Franchise > Team > Player
Future historians will celebrate June 24, 2024 as the date when the timeline corrected itself.
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