BTS under Windows 8.1

[taylorr]

I have been using BTS for some time and it works fine so far until I upgraded to Windows 8.1 a few days ago. 

 

I have 4 devices connected: a HP server running Ubuntu, 1 MBA running mavericks, 1 notebook with Windows 7, 1 desktop running Windows 8. All are running the latest build of BTS for each OS. 

 

HP server being the bulk device, it can been seen from my MBA and notebook but can't been seen from my Windows 8.1 desktop. 

 

I have checked my Windows firewall setting, BTS is under the whitelist. 

 

Re-installed BTS (with settings kept), but still the same issue. 

 

Any help will be highly appreciated. 

[nils]

First of all, sync should still work, because the other two nodes (OS X, Win7) will forward changes from/to the HP sever and the Win8.1 desktop.

It is not clear, what network setup you have, where are all the devices? same network, behind routers (NAT), public IP, VPN etc

[taylorr]

@nils,

 

All 4 devices mentioned in my post are within one home network, with the same IP range (192.168.1.x). Currently only 3 nodes are able to find each other: HP server, MBA, Notebook.

 

Windows 8.1 is not visible to others, and vice versa. 

[theclam159]

I have a very similar problem.  I have an Android device, a Windows 7 PC, and a Windows 8.1 PC and after upgrading to Windows 8.1, it no longer works.  Neither of the other devices can see the 8.1 machine.  The 8.1 machine can see the other devices, but doesn't transfer anything with them.  I sent an email to the support a few days ago but haven't heard anything back yet.

[taylorr]

Two months passed and  I would like to highlight some findings, which may or may not be of help. 

 

1. Some may suggest a route reset. This is not the case in my Netgear JWNR2000 router. I did the reset but no avail. 

2. Recalled that a previous topic somewhere mentioned that in occasions, BTS will prompt "Ownership... Reset?" and mentioned that it is due to the problem of a possible already used key. 

 

2.1 This could be the case. Try some other key by re-generating. 

2.2 Check the ownership of your Windows folder to be synced too and change it accordingly. Remove the sync folder list in BTS and add back again. 

 

This should do most of the trick. I managed to have all my devices syncing each other after the above two steps - not sure which actually does the help. 

[Voobr]

I have BitTorrent Sync installed on several machines in my home, including a Windows PC.

 

I recently installed Windows 8.1 on my PC, and BitTorrent Sync has stopped working on that machine. BTSync on my other machines can't see the Windows 8.1 PC, and vice versa.

 

An acknowledgement of this issue by the Sync devs would be nice. It sounds like I'm not the only one experiencing a complete failure of BitTorrent Sync on Windows 8.1.

 

Edit: I'm running BTSync 1.2.82 on all of my machines.

 

V

Edited December 27, 2013 by Voobr

[Harold Feit]

Did you remove and re-add the rules for sync in your firewall yet?

 

I've got it working fine on two different windows 8.1 machines.

[taylorr]

Hi all, 

 

First of all, thanks for all the replies and suggestions. 

 

To summarize this common and painful issue and how to resolve it (more or less) as below:

 

After several re-installation of BTS on my Windows 8.1 and route resets, I think the key area to look at is the router's UPNP settings. In my Netgear JWNR2000 router, it has 2 settings for UPNP (my router interface is in Chinese and can't find an option to switch to English so the below two terms are my translation):

 

Broadcast Alive Interval (min)

Broadcast Alive Interval (hops)

 

The default is something like 30 minutes and 4 hops. I have changed to 5 minutes and 10 hops. 

 

Now it is working fine. 

 

Note: It is not recommended to set the hops to above 10 in a more intranet oriented network. In my experience, it will "somehow" ignore intranet UPNP discovery and thus not able to find my intranet BTS instances. 

 

Note: If for some weird reason, Windows 8.1 BTS stops being seen and seeing others again, try adjusting the above two parameters again (especially the hops). And also try to disable UPNP in your router first, and after say 30 seconds, enable UPNP. 

 

One more addition: in a pure LAN environment, you can try to add "Preferred Host" in your Windows machine. This helps a lot. 

[Voobr]

Hi all,

 

It's been months, and BTSync still doesn't function on my Windows 8.1 machine. Any new information? I'm happy to provide info for help in debugging, or participate in troubleshooting. I've tried everything I can think of it, but maybe someone out there has some different strategies.

 

Thank you.

 

V

[taylorr]

Hi all,

 

It's been months, and BTSync still doesn't function on my Windows 8.1 machine. Any new information? I'm happy to provide info for help in debugging, or participate in troubleshooting. I've tried everything I can think of it, but maybe someone out there has some different strategies.

 

Thank you.

 

V

 

I forgot to update this thread. 

 

I am now more or less solved this issue:

 

In a LAN environment, to set "Use predefined hosts" should solve most of the issues. 

 

In Windows/Mac, right click a folder, and "Show Folder Preferences", and add all other machines IP/port. In Linux, can do the same. Do that until a folder in all your machines have all other machines as its preferred hosts. 

[syncingpossum]

Found this thread by searching on Google for my problems with BTS under Windows 8.1.

 

I have three computers on a LAN, two running older versions of Windows, and one running Windows 8.1. I only want to sync on LAN, and the two older computers work completely fine with NAT disabled, relay servers off, and trackers servers off. My Windows 8.1 computer wouldn't connect without those things enabled.

 

The solution here worked for me, by adding the other computers as predefined hosts, my Windows 8.1 computer will connect to them. It's unfortunate that this is necessary, as it really reduces flexibility and is a hassle.

 

I set up all three of them exactly the same way, and confirmed multiple times there are firewall exceptions properly set for all of them. I think there's almost certainly some bug lurking around in the way BitTorrent Sync works under Windows 8.1.