Vista IP Blocking II: uTorrent
Seeing as how quite a few people found the previous article on a PeerGuardian alternative in vista useful, I decided to adapt the tutorial to fit a client that is used a little more frequently – uTorrent.
Those of you still interested in making this work in Azureus, you can read my previous article. As for anyone who is wondering on how to block IP addresses without using PeerGuardian in uTorrent, here it is (also, I assume you already have installed uTorrent at this point):
- Open up uTorrent and head over to Options -> Preferences on the menu bar. Click on Advanced and search for ipfilter.enable – make sure that it is set to true (it should be by default). Close uTorrent.
- Download and install the latest version of Blocklist Manager (2.7 at this time).
- Go ahead and open up Blocklist Manager:
- Click on the Sources button. It should download the latest available source file locations (not the actual IP lists themselves, as they will come later).
- Now go to Tools->Options (Ctrl+O). Head on into the Sources option on the left. You should see something like this:
- Enable all the sources as you see fit. Just remember, this blog is on an Edu Range
- Now, head back to the main screen of Blocklist Manager and go to Export -> Export Manager in the menu bar.
Set the following fields:
Name: Whatever best fits
Format: eMule/Donk
Location: XP - C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\Application Data\uTorrent\ipfilter.dat
Vista – C:\Users\<USERNAME>\AppData\Roaming\uTorrent\ipfilter.dat
Export Location Active: Checked
And click Add
Now, go back to the main screen of Blocklist Manager and click Process. This will automatically download all the sources and compile a list of IP addresses which now need to be put somewhere. At this point, make sure that uTorrent is fully closed (out of the taskbar). Click Export List to export the IP addresses to the blocklist file. It may ask you if you want to overwrite the previous file – say yes.
You will also want to keep up to date with your IP listings; make sure you process and export the list from Blocklist Manager weekly or monthly (or daily if you are absolutely paranoid). The sources themselves are rarely updated, but it is nice to check by just clicking on the Sources button. Other than that, happy IP blocking!
July 12th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
If I do all this… I don’t need PeerGuardian?
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:29 pm
Dose this stop my isp from finding out if im downloading ? Please reply back
July 24th, 2008 at 8:40 am
http://www.austrianalex.com/2007/09/23/vista-ip-blocking-peerguardian-alternative#comment-114
July 29th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
If I add ip’s to ipfilter.dat will utorrent block all ports or only p2p traffic ? I want to add a range to utorrent and have every port blocked like pg2 did.
July 30th, 2008 at 8:17 am
Only p2p traffic for this method (or more precisely, just every port that uTorrent is using)…although I’m sure you could achieve blocking all ports by adding the IP definitions to some kind of firewall, but I can’t exactly answer which one would suit best at the moment.
-Alex
August 15th, 2008 at 7:16 am
In version 2.7.7, the only thing resembling
“Export Location Archive: Checked”
is
“Export Location Active: Checked”
(note active vs archive)
Nice tutotial, BTW – thanks!
BTW&FWIW, I’ve followed these instructions (with the exception of checking “Active” rather than “Archive”) and, as Im running XP I can run both utorrent with lists enabled and peerguardian2 – looking to see what pg2 stops that these lists don’t.
Yes, I realize that it’s simply a “what ip range is in which list” issue – but it’s not at all clear (at least not to me) that the lists come from exactly the same places. Anyone know about this?
If anyone else wants to do this (probably a decent idea as anything I find is probably colored by the fact that I try to avoid RIAA/MPAA stuff – and that’s what MediaSentry is trying to grab(?)).
Anyway, if you do, remember that PG2 is working as a firewall, so inbound connections will be intercepted/logged _before_ they get to utorrent. So just look at the blocked outbound connection history.
August 15th, 2008 at 9:10 am
I forgot to mention: if you’re using PG2, there’s recently been an issue with it blocking *zero* sites and not warning you. So, even if you’ve got PG2, you *want* a blocklist in utorrent as well. Belt and suspenders and all that…
September 18th, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Many thanks!
October 1st, 2008 at 10:44 pm
thanks mate! worked like a charm…
October 4th, 2008 at 2:53 am
any way to se what that has been blocked? like the list in peerguardian!
October 4th, 2008 at 8:22 am
Unfortunately you can only load the IP filter into uTorrent, you can’t actually see which ones get blocked as they come in.
-Alex
November 1st, 2008 at 4:29 pm
it says bluetack list is empty
November 1st, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Depending on the list, it might just be a temporary issue with bluetacks servers. Try again in a bit.
-Alex
November 18th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
ok, heres a end-all-be-all (for now) for blocking in vista.
make a .bat file and copy the following code: (between the lines)
____________________________________________
@echo off
if exist ipfilter.dat copy ipfilter.dat ipfilter.bak > nul
if exist ipfilter.dat del ipfilter.dat
wget.exe -r –tries=3 http://emulepawcio.sourceforge.net/nieuwe_site/Ipfilter_fakes/ipfilter.dat -O ipfilter.dat
____________________________________________
save the bat file. Now, place that .bat file in (vista location only) [replace XXXX with you ruser name]:
C:\Users\XXXX\AppData\Roaming\uTorrent\
after that, make a shortcut to that bat file on your desktop, and occasionally update your ipfilter file.
PRESTO.
November 18th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Yeah, that works too. The only two things I see wrong with it, though:
1) If the URL for the file changes, you’ll be screwed and you won’t even know it as you’ll write the information from a 404 page into your ipfilter.dat file (which will pretty much block nothing). The blocklist manager avoids this problem by letting you update your sources list which updates the URLs for you if they ever get moved around.
2) You need to have wget installed on your system for this to work. wget, while a default package on many linux systems, is not included in any Windows OS by default (unless you got your Microsoft product from a “third party”). Here’s the URL for that tool: http://www.gnu.org/software/wget/.
Again, I recommend the blocklist manager just because it is more flexible, and it is updated with URL’s and such better. You don’t have to keep track of URL’s; it does it for you.
-Alex
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:30 am
Thanks for this man, is there a way to get a global list of movie/recors studio and gov ip ranges to add to the list?
December 28th, 2008 at 9:41 am
how will we know if its working???
December 29th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Check under the log tab. uTorrent should mention something about loading in a blocklist file and then say how many IP addy’s it’s blocking. If it’s anything over 0, you’re in good shape (more realistically, it’ll be more than 100k give or take some number I can’t remember). Like said before, it won’t keep a log file of IP’s that it is actively blocking, but it’ll block them regardless.
-Alex
March 9th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
Is it possible to import the Peerguardian lists to blocklist manager and then convert them also in the ipfilter.dat ? Or is this totally unnecessary?
thanks
March 9th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Yeah, its possible… but I don’t see why you’d want to. Peerguardian’s lists are identical to that of the Blocklist Manager (they both use the ones provided by bluetack’s servers). You’d essentially just be merging identical lists into each other, which just wastes time in the long run.
-Alex
March 28th, 2009 at 3:21 pm
I followed all the directions and for vista entered
C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\uTorrent\ipfilter.dat with my user name. But when I tried to export list it said that there was an error. What should I do?
Thanks
March 28th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Without knowing the error message, I can’t really help too much. You might also want to search the bluetack forums, since they are more knowledgeable to the inner workings of the program:
http://www.bluetack.co.uk/forums/index.php?showforum=53
Alex
April 7th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Thanks for the tutorial! I had just about given up on ever figuring out Blocklist Manager.
June 5th, 2009 at 11:11 pm
I had the same problem as hannah. I can’t figure it out tho. need help.
here’s the error message:
Ready.
Writing to C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\uTorrent\ipfilter.dat
:: Error in WriteFile: Bad file name or number, file=C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\uTorrent\ipfilter.dat
Ready.
June 5th, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Make sure you have write access to that file. Check to see if it exists, if yes, make sure you are running blocklist manager as an Administrator just to be sure.
Alex
June 5th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I checked and it doesn’t exist XD? kinda new to this
June 5th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
so how do i get this to work? and I know this is a stupid question but I can’t find the answer anywhere, does this block isp’s like peergaurdian
June 6th, 2009 at 12:06 am
So you have to find out where your uTorrent data is being stored. Open up explorer and type in “%APPDATA%” without the quotes. This will bring you into a directory which should have a folder called uTorrent – open that up. Take note of the location in which you are in – this will be the path that you will need to enter into Blocklist Manager (in place of c:\users\etc…).
Block ISP’s? Er, not really ISP’s; more like corporations. Like peerguardian? Very similar, but with the distinction that it will only work for uTorrent, not for the whole system.
Alex
June 6th, 2009 at 12:45 am
Thank You for the help but I unfortunatly can not find it anywhere to be honest >..<
June 6th, 2009 at 12:49 am
had more to that message o.O
June 6th, 2009 at 12:52 am
ok found it thnx ^_^
June 6th, 2009 at 12:56 am
uo and working againg thanks alot, and wonderful tutorial
June 6th, 2009 at 10:28 pm
Very good tutorial, thanks a lot.
June 18th, 2009 at 2:58 pm
I know that this has been asked already, but exactly, how do you know that this is working? In utorrent, I found a “Logger” tab but all it say is:
[2009-06-17 22:25:45] IPv6 is installed
[2009-06-10 09:17:02] ***12 Rounds: PIECE 903 FAILED HASH CHECK
Am I looking in the wrong place?
Thanks for all this info by the way!
June 18th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Means its not working; unless you see specifically a line that says “Loaded ipfilter.dat (XXXXX entries)”, then it means you did something wrong.
Alex
June 18th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
I know that this is stupid, but I really cannot find this path:
C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\uTorrent\ipfilter.dat
I get all the way to \torrent but there is no ipfilter.dat. I did what you said about putting ““%APPDATA%” without the quotes” in Explorer but I don’t see “ipfilter.dat”. I uninstalled utorrent and redownloaded it and it still is not there. I am guessing that if I do not have the ipfilter.dat file that I cannot direct Blocklist Manager. I can see the following .dat files:
dht.dat
dht.dat.old
resume.dat
resume.dat.old
rss.dat
rss.dat.old
settings.dat
settings.dat.old
Any ideas?
June 18th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
It doesn’t have to exist; blocklist manager will make it for you. You just have to specify that location (including the file) when you set up blocklist manager (in the export section). Once you update your blocklists and export, you should see the file in that directory. And %APPDATA% will bring you to all the application data (C:\Users\YourUser\AppData), so you’d still need to go into the uTorrent folder – but it looks to me like you have it already.
Alex
June 19th, 2009 at 3:35 pm
I don’t know what I did different, but it now says:
[2009-06-19 17:32:56] Loaded ipfilter.dat (323165 entries)
Thanks for all your help!!!