qbittorrent freezing / lagging my computer

[kraihavok]

Hi all. I am currently having an issue with qbittorrent. Everything seems to go fine, I have 3 active downloads, and several more queue'd. However, after about 20 minutes or so, my entire computer seems to lock up, and freeze. It starts with videos being really choppy, and my mouse cursor jumping from place to place when I move it. When I see this happen, I usually only have about 30 seconds or so until all screens go black and my machine freezes and I have to physically reboot it. This has never happened before. It only does it when qbittorrent is running. Any word on this? Should I revert back to an older version of qbittorrent? Currently I am using 4.1.5, and am on windows 10. Also I run a VPN.

Any advice would be appreciated as I am not exactly sure where to go from here.

Thank you in advance.

Chris

[Switeck]

1.Is your computer running out of free ram or is qBitTorrent using too much virtual memory? (when the freeze happens of course!)

2.What's qBitTorrent's disk cache size (in advanced settings) set to?

3.Are you running the 32bit or 64bit version of qBitTorrent?

[kraihavok]

Hi. Thank you for the speedy response.

1) I am not quite sure what you asking me, or how to find the information. I have tried having my task manager open, and the CPU seems to go through the roof, but by the time it shows up on the task manager, the entire machine is frozen, and unresponsive.
2) Disk cache is set to 64 MiB
3) I am running the 64 bit version (my OS and CPU are 64 bit).

Also, as an experiment, I paused all downloads and uploads (I had several) to see what would happen, and the machine still locked up. So I then deleted all torrents, both upload and download, and so far so good. it has been about 20 minutes and it is still going.

[Switeck]

Windows Task Manager should do ok at reporting ram used by qBT -- if it's >1000 MB, there is almost certainly problems/bugs in qBT considering qBT's disk cache is set to 64MB.

I've heard of weird cases where there were 2 torrents trying to download to the same filename+file location and "fighting it out" -- but that wouldn't happen while seeding, as I seed a few torrents that share the same files!

Try disabling the OS cache in qBT's advanced settings. (it's near disk cache)

[kraihavok]

Ok - I tried it and started downloading again - Will have to wait about 20 or 30 mins to see if it made a difference. Will post again either way.

[kraihavok]

OK looks like that may have done the trick - steady downloading for nearly 3 hours, and no problems so far. So what exactly is that setting that I changed? What does it do? I don't remember ever having to do that before? Any idea what changed?

[kraihavok]

Ok so Just an update: I did have to reboot my machine, but I don't know if that was something I was doing wrong with chrome because I had like 15 tabs up, and a video playing.

I will leave this on all night, and report back tomorrow to see if it stays up.

[kraihavok]

Ok, so it appears that it did not work. It did lag my computer really badly, but oddly enough, it didnt lag it so bad that I couldnt reboot from the start menu (usually I have to do it by pressing the reset button on the computer) - Any ideas on what to do next?

[Switeck]

AntiVirus software often comes with a firewall app built-in that logs traffic...the longer it runs, the larger that log can get -- which might be the cause of the slowdowns you're seeing.
(Mainly because the AV's firewall software typically sucks due to bugs and slowness.)

What firewall/s and antivirus software you got running?

[kraihavok]

The only thing I use is windows defender. I can only use windows defender because of my job (I use my computer in a work from home job).

[Switeck]

Then the VPN may be to blame, since I can't think of much else...unless the download/upload speed is so high (like >>1 MB/sec) that the cpu is overloaded.

Does qbittorrent.exe show up in windows task manager as using >25% of cpu?

[kraihavok]

No, not at first. But as time goes on (like I said, up to 20 or 30 minutes or so) it slowly builds to 99%, and even when I stop the process, it stays at 99%

[Switeck]

So qbittorrent.exe is what's slowly building to 99% cpu usage? ...and not some hidden process or windows service? (or virus/malware)

I don't understand how qbittorrent.exe can be to blame when its process is stopped.

[kraihavok]

Hey Switeck, I figured it out man. Thank you for your assistance and patience. So, as it turns out, the problem was with a network manager that comes stock with my motherboard. I had known about the problems it has caused in the past (slow web pages, sucking up resources etc). However, recently I did an OSRI, and when I did, I forgot to disable the network manager (Killer Network Manager is the name).

Any the hoo - thank you for your assistance.

[Switeck]

Deep Packet Inspection firewalls have to work extra-hard when BitTorrent throws 50+ peers+seeds at it at once.
Just trying to remember every ip address that's connected in the last hour would resemble a memory leak.