Beginners' guide to BitTorrent

This beginners' guide to BitTorrent will help you start downloading from BitTorrent. This guide is useful for anyone who is completely new to BitTorrent. The whole BitTorrent downloading process is explained in three simply steps.

First of all, you'll need a BitTorrent client program

There are plenty of BitTorrent client programs out there; our BitTorrent download section includes all clients worth mentioning. I personally use µTorrent to download and manage my torrents. I recommend you stick to one of the following clients:

• µTorrent
• BitComet
• BitTorrent (Mainline)
• Vuze

Search for torrent files

BitTorrent client programs use "torrent" files which tell them how to download the file(s) you want. A torrent file is very small and contains only a few lines of text.

There are various torrent index and torrent search sites around. I recommend you do all your torrent search work with Torrent Scan. Torrent Scan offers you a list of BitTorrent search engines. Just enter your keyword(s) on the left and click a on torrent engine, results will appear on the right.

BitTorrent downloading

When you think you've found the file you are looking for, just click to download the required torrent file. Open the torrent file with your BitTorrent client manually if it hasn't already popped up. When starting a new torrent download, your BitTorrent client might ask you which files you want to download: A torrent file may contain download information for more than one file. Select all files, or choose to download just a few.

The BitTorrent downloading should now begin; the selected files will be downloaded and stored in the program's default download location or the download location you specified.

Important notes!

• Some torrent files are incorrectly labelled, sometimes on purpose. Always make sure your virus scanner is on.
• Some BitTorrent downloads might not start to download. There can be many reasons for this:
  • No one is sharing the file(s) you want -- grab yourself another torrent and try again
  • BitTorrent traffic is being blocked by your firewall, router or internet service provider (ISP) -- make sure you correctly configured your firewall and router, if your ISP blocks BitTorrent traffic you should get a different ISP
  • The torrent uses a BitTorrent network that is no longer accessible or the tracker doesn't work -- again just grab yourself a new torrent and try again
• Situation: You've finally completed downloading a file, but when you try to open the file you get a message asking for a password -- you'll have to grab a different torrent file and try again (this is a spam technique, yes even BitTorrent has not been spared)

Related

• BitTorrent guide - If this beginners' guide isn't enough than this comprehensive BitTorrent probably will be.