WinMX Guide

WinMX is one of the most popular file-sharing networks in Japan. It is estimated that over 3 million Japanese have used WinMX, and the number is growing rapidly from year to year. A recent report found that it is the most popular P2P client in Japan among heavy users and adult video fans. It also has a wide selection of J-dramas new and old. It is probably one of the easier P2P programs to set up, and use, and there are many active forums and chat channels in English which can provide support. Another feature is that you can view incomplete video files from start to end, just by clicking on them.

WinMX runs on most versions of Microsoft Windows, and there are versions available for Linux. The company that first developed WinMX, Frontcode Technologies, no longer runs any servers, but the WinMX Group put together new servers and a patch in September 2005, mere days after Frontcode shut down. Users of Windows XP and 2000 can download the latest version (3.54 Patched) at:

WinMX ConEx

If you are using a firewall, you will need to add WinMX to the list of programs with access to the internet and/or open up a couple of ports, so that traffic can get through. In WinMX, you can find (and change) the port numbers by clicking on Settings, and then Incoming TCP Connections and In/Out UDP Packets under Internet Connections. If you are using the Windows XP SP2 firewall, click on Start, Settings, Control Panel, Windows Firewall, Exceptions and then Add Port, ie. the same numbers as listed in WinMX.

Once you are online, click on the Search tab. Under 'Artist and / or Title,' there are two empty text boxes, one above the other. In the top box, you can type in your favourite Japanese search terms, eg. a video title, an actor or actress's name in kanji or some genre of video. Make sure that the button left of "Search in a New Window" is set to "Any File / Bitrate" or "Video" and not "MP3 Audio."

If you are only getting few results from your searches, add the most popular file to your download queue, switch to the Transfers window, right click on the file, and choose Search for Alternates. This will open a new search window, searching by hash so it will find files that have been renamed for example from Japanese to English or other languages.

The box underneath that is for hash values, a long series of numbers and letters that uniquely identifies each video or mp3. The ability to search by hash means that you can find files that have been renamed e.g. from Japanese to English. To locate these files, just copy a hash value you find posted (including the 'HASH>' part) into the lower search box, click on 'Search,' and the relevant video should turn up. Right click on it, and choose 'Download,' and then follow your progress in the Transfers window.

There are various ways to try to speed up your downloads. One of the best ways is to find another user who wants to trade files with you, tell each other what number you are in the queue, and then start each other. Browse the files of users who you are uploading to to see if they have anything you want.

It is a good idea to share a large number of files similar to what you are looking for because users who are uploading to you may be browsing your library as well, or may have MX Monitor set only to upload to users with some minimum number of files.

If you are in the transfers window sitting in someone's queue and not downloading, you can right click on the file, and choose "Search for Alternates" to find other sources which may have shorter queues.

For files not even in queue, you can set "Auto Find Sources" to 10 minutes, and "Auto Enter Queue" to 100, and then WinMX will automatically go looking for other sources. If a queue is longer than 100 you may want to right click the file, and "Enter Remote Queue" anyway. If you try to download two files from the same user the second one gets Queued Locally, but you can right click on the file, and choose Start Transfer.

You can ask questions in the WinMX World Forum. WinMX World also has a friendly help chat room once you get connected.

To view Japanese in WinMX in Windows, under Settings, Control Panel, Regional and Language Settings, you may have to extend support for advanced text services to all programs, and set Japanese as your language for non-Unicode programs. After this in Windows Explorer dialogs, back slashes will appear as yen marks, and you may have to switch back to English when installing new programs.