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1) Where will LimeWire store my files?

Your LimeWire files will be stored in the directory that you chose during setup. At least two folders will be in that directory: LimeWire and Incomplete.

The "Incomplete" folder will contain exactly that -- incomplete files that you are either in the process of downloading of have yet to download. Since LimeWire does not store your searches, this is the only data that is carried across sessions.

This folder will also contain incomplete files even if you have explicitly cancelled them by selecting the files and pressing "Cancel".

Also, during those times that LimeWire dumps all downloads (you can no longer continue to download your files because LimeWire will not display any), incomplete files will still reside here. Do not have hopes of recovering them, however. I list further details on my page on LimeWire problems.

Also, two mysterious files will reside here: downloads.dat, and downloads.bak. And no, that .bak file is not a backup file because I tried.

Now on to useful information. Your COMPLETED downloads will be stored in the "LimeWire" folder. You can freely view them, organize or move to other locations, and delete. Although any of these operations will force you to do it over again and again in the future. Read on to understand why...

3) Duplicate files listed

Most of your searches will display duplicate filenames. My only suggestion is to not download any files with the filename of a file you have already downloaded. Below I will list a few related problems.

5) Moving or deleting files from the LimeWire folder

Keeping the files inside the LimeWire directory (where they have been downloaded) has one benefit: during searches you will see that some files in the search results window indicate that they have been downloaded.

If you delete or move the files, if you tend to download many files at the same time, or repeat the search term, your search results will list files that you have already downloaded (and either still have or have deleted since), and you will go thru the same process that you went before.

You might think that it is possible to download the files and decide later, when windows will report that the files you are trying to move already exist in the destination directory. It is not that simple however.

Music files: You will most definitely encounter many music duplicate files on the network. Two files with the same size or file name (or both) might not be the same file, however, Many music files will have wrong or different sampling resolution, length, unnecessary extra characters in filenames, corrupted data, etc. So the closest to an easies solution is to move all your music files to one directory, and place any duplicates in folders within that folder (as in Duplicate1, Duplicate2, Duplicate3, ...). Then, your music player will list all songs, including duplicates, in the playlist from where you can compare file lengths, filename similarities, listen to the songs, etc; and manually delete any duplicates. A search for automated or software solutions for this problem might be worth your time.

7) Very long or meaningless filenames

Many files you download will have filenames that are too long, sometimes to the point of being useless. However, simply because of the number of files involved, and the fact of automated generation of those stupid filenames, any efforts to modify filenames will be a total waste of your time. Most of the time, it is better to leave filenames as you download them.