How to fix "HTTP invalid URL" in uTorrent 2.x

Question

If you use uTorrent 2.0.4 or 2.2.1 (this may also apply to 3.x, I don't know), you may notice that some torrents show this under the Logger tab:

<Torrent name>: HTTP invalid URL: 

It doesn't interfere with the torrent operation, these torrents work and seed just fine, it's just an annoyance. If you have enough torrents in your client, these messages may drown out relevant messages.

Where do these messages come from, and how can you get rid of them?

_{Note: comments about using old versions of uTorrent are irrelevant to this question and will be ignored.}

Answer 1

These torrents have an empty Web Seeds entry. This entry can be set via Torrent properties -> Advanced tab, but unfortunately you can only empty the value there, not actually remove it.

All torrents in my client that showed this problem were created by qBittorrent v3.n.x, with n=0..3, so there may have been an issue in these versions.

How to fix

Preparations

• "Select all" in the Logger tab, copy to a text editor, remove date/time (column edit), remove all lines without "HTTP invalid URL", sort alphabetically. This will be your reference list of torrents to edit.
• Get BEncode Editor
• Close uTorrent, make sure the process has ended
• Open %appdata%\uTorrent
• Make a backup of resume.dat -- this is essential if anything goes wrong!

Step 1: Torrent files

Start BEncode Editor, open the first torrent:

The empty "Web Seeds" is the node url-list (b)[0]= at the bottom.

Delete this node (Del or the red minus in the toolbar).

Save (Ctrl+s)

Do this for all affected torrents.

Step 2: resume.dat

The empty web seeds information is replicated in resume.dat, so you have to edit them all a second time.

Open %appdata%\uTorrent\resume.dat in BEncode Editor (you did make a copy, didn't you?)

Note: If your resume.dat is several MB in size (with several thousand torrents), all operations (open, edit, save, close) will take several seconds. Be patient.

Right at the top (below ROOT) is a node .fileguard (b)[40]. Delete this node, otherwise uTorrent will refuse to load the edited resume.dat. uTorrent will automatically regenerate the key on the next start.

---

Scroll to the first torrent, expand it, and scroll down. There should be a webseeds (l)[1] entry.

Expand it, select the empty node below, and delete the empty node.

You want to change it from this:

to this:

If you have problems selecting the tiny empty node, select "webseeds" and use the keyboard down arrow to move down.

Repeat this for all affected torrents.

Save, close BEncode Editor.

Restart uTorrent and watch with delight the almost empty Logger tab.