TorrentSpyFrequently Asked Questions
- How do I install it?
- You don't need to. It is a completely self-contained program. You can run it from any place on your hard drive or network. Make a directory, throw it in there, and get going.
- How do I uninstall it? I don't trust programs without an uninstaller.
- Delete the file. That's it. That's all you do.
- How much does it pollute my registry?
- It makes minimal changes, only enough to save your settings and make the right file associations (if you choose those options).
- I'm getting "cannot open file" errors and "commandline is garbage". What up?
- This normally means your file associations are horked in the registry. TorrentSpy does its best to work around these problems, but Windows really doesn't like spaces in filenames. (Despite 8 years to get it right.) Make sure that all of your command line arguments are quoted.
- How do I move it to a different place on my hard drive without screwing up my settings?
- The program is powered by magic pixie dust and is self-healing. Move it to the new location and run it by itself (without opening a torrent) and it will automagically attempt to fix any incorrect registry links.
- Why is the file check so slow? Why does it take twice as long as the normal BT client?
- This is 100% intentional. It does its best to allow you to continue to use your machine while the check is taking place. The next time you have a 3GB torrent that takes 5 minutes to check even on the normal BT client, you'll be happy that you can do other things while the check runs.
- Why would I go through the extra step of having to configure the Launch button or use the Check button?
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The default BT3.x client does not as yet support the ability to check the current number of seeds and leeches (people with 100% of the file, and people with something less than 100% of the file), nor does it tell you which sub-files are complete/incomplete. Checking the seed/leech count is a quick HTTP operation so it is done by default when you open the app. Checking the files for completion, however, can take quite a long time for large files, and if it is a single-file torrent then you really don't get much more information than you would with the normal BT client. Therefore, it's a manual operation.
The way TSpy is intended to be used and is actually most commonly used is as a quick way to check the seed/leech count. This is because for most of the file trading that is currently done with BT, a torrent will stay active for a week at most and then go dead with no seeders. It sucks to launch the BT client, have it check your 2GB torrent, then wait an hour only to get stuck at 60%. TSpy can tell you in 5 seconds the odds of you getting a good download. The other usage that has become quite popular is for a seeder to pop up TSpy every now and then to see if anyone is still leeching. If not, they can take down their BT client and go seed something else. In both of these cases you don't necessarily want to launch the BT client, which is why that is also a manual operation.
The more granular file check is in place to help people recover something if it looks like their torrent is dead and they don't yet have all of it. It'll tell you which files are complete and how much you are still missing. And, before BT3.2 added in the download count counter, it was amusing to just keep rechecking the files to watch the bits pour in.
Admittedly, the extremely casual BT user probably won't have much use for TSpy. They'll probably be getting only the most popular and long-lived torrents that are almost guaranteed to always have seeders. But for the people that are trying to keep track of files that start and die out within a few days' time, TSpy can be rather useful.