Binary Boy

First make sure Binary Boy is set up properly. Click Settings on the toolbar.

Click the Dialer tab. If you have a modem, click the phone book option and select an entry to use. If you have a cable modem or other permanent connection, click the "permanent" option.

While still in the settings, click the Server tab. Enter the address of your news server. Usually it looks something like news.myisp.com. If your server requires a username and password, enter them. Otherwise leave those fields blank.

Now start a search. Click the Search toolbar button and a window will pop up.

Enter a search string such as gif or jpg, then select a list such as sample.lst. Select a starting point such as New or All. If you want the program to download files automatically, click Auto. Click OK.

Binary Boy will attempt to dial if necessary and connect to the server. After a few seconds you should see a list of subjects that matched your search string (gif or jpg). If the list is empty, try a different search string such as a single asterisk: *

Click on a subject, then click the Download button. For multipart files, right-click on a subject and click Download All Parts Of in the pop-up menu. If you have Auto enabled, Binary Boy will select and download the files for you. The default folder for attachments is Attachments under the Binary Boy program folder.

If you have the Free Trial, you'll need to use a viewer such as ACDSee. to view downloaded pictures. If you have Binary Boy Pro, enable the picture window in the Settings on the GUI tab.

For viewing pictures, the best viewer I've found is ACDSee.

For mpg movies, try Windows Media Player or Real Player

For mp3 audio files, try WinAmp or Real Player

Go to the Newsgroups tab in the settings. Click on "Use the server's wildmat (wildcard) matching" option. Enter alt.binaries* Click OK, then click the Newsgroups button on the toolbar to download the binaries groups.

If that doesn't work, go back to the Newsgroups tab in the settings and click "Download entire list" instead. Then click the Newsgroups button on the toolbar.

Now open the group list editor. Typing binaries in the right pane should show all the binaries groups.

Close your search session, load the list into the group list editor and click "Create subfolders for newsgroups", then Save.

Look for the newspaper icon in the system tray near the clock on the taskbar.

Click on it to bring up Binary Boy.

Close Binary Boy.

Run the upgrade again.

If that doesn't work, contact support. Include your order id for the fastest response.

Binary Boy version 1.94 build 1 had a memory leak. Upgrade to the latest build from the patch page.

On the Newsgroups tab in the settings, enable the cache option.

On the Search Strings tab in the settings, set "Apply Search/Filters during subject download" to All.

Now only the search results rather than the complete header list will be loaded into memory.

Clicking Refresh will check for new headers from the server and then load from the cache. Right-clicking the Refresh button will load directly from the cache without connecting to the server.

To reduce memory usage further, you can disable the "Download extended headers" option on the Newsgroups tab in the settings. This will download only the subject rather than date, from, etc... To have an immediate impact, you would need to delete the cache files so that they're replaced. You can do this from the Master Reset command under the File menu.

Some servers require the extended headers option to be on. If you get errors in the Log window, try enabling it again.

Create a list for each server in the group list editor or make copies of your existing list. Enter a different server address in the Server field for each list. This field overrides the default server in the settings.

Now chain them together with the Chain To field. For the first list, enter the second list's filename in the Chain To Field. For the second, enter the third list's name, etc.. The Last list's Chain To field should be blank.

Run a search using the first list and it will automatically continue into the second (and the next server) after the last newsgroup.

.BBT files contain the raw text of downloaded articles. You can view the text in Wordpad or any other editor capable of loading large files. Binary Boy normally assembles and decodes the .BBT files automatically. If some remain, it means Binary Boy couldn't find all the parts on the server. You can force it to decode incomplete sets with the "Dr. Binary" command under the File menu.

On the File | History window do you have the "Remember filenames for" option set to 0? That will delete all filenames every time it closes. If you don't want it to ever forget the filenames, enter a large number of days like 123456.

Here are all the potential search string results:

SEARCH_NOW - The search string in the Search dialog and under the Search tab.

SEARCH_ALWAYS - The global search string in the settings.

SEARCH_GROUP - The search string for the specific newsgroup. In the group list editor, click on the newsgroup name in the left pane.

SEARCH_GROUPLIST - The search string at the top of the group list editor.

No search strings matched - none of the 4 search strings above matched.

Filter results:

FILTER_NOW - Filter in the Search dialog and under the Search tab.

FILTER_ALWAYS - Globabl filter in the settings under the Search Strings tab.

FILTER_GROUP - Filter for the newsgroup. In the group list editor, click on the newsgroup name in the left pane.

FILTER_GROUPLIST - Filter at the top of the group list editor.

HEADERFILTER - Filter applied to each line in the header, including subject. It's in the settings under the Header Filter tab. During the initial subject download, this is applied only to the subject. Later it's applied to each line in the header during the article download. If it matches a header line, the article will be skipped.

In order to increase speed, Binary Boy attempts to do as little work as possible. As soon as one search string matches, it stops checking other search strings and checks the filters. As soon as a filter matches, it stops checking other filters. If no search strings match, it doesn't bother to check the filters. So the most you will see is one search string match and one filter match even if multiple search strings and filters might match.

Binary Boy can dial your modem, connect to the news server and download all files matching your search criteria, then hang up when it's finished -- completely automatically.

• Click the Scheduler button on the toolbar to bring up the schedule editor.
• Click Add New Event.
• Select One Time Only to create an event for a specific day or "Daily" to run it every day at the same time.
• Select the month and day for a "One Time Only" run or just enter the time for daily events. The time limit can be left at 0 if you don't want to use it.
• Select a group list to use for the search.
• Enter a search string such as .jpg | .gif
• The Starting Point is usually "New" for scheduled searches.
• Usually you'll want "loop" off and "Hang Up" on so it finishes and hangs up.
• Save.
• Important: Put Binary Boy in Sleep mode from the Scheduler menu. If it's not in sleep mode, the scheduler won't run.

You can do this even though it might not be obvious. The trick is to filter everything that's not from the sender you're looking for.

If you want to find articles from someone@somewhere.com, set the filter string under the Header Filter tab in the settings to ("From:" AND NOT "someone@somewhere.com") then run a search for * (a single asterisk).

There is an option to store text articles in a file named text.txt. To set the option for the current list, open a search session, right-click to open the pop-up menu. In the "List Options" sub-menu click "Send text articles to text.txt". You can also enable the option from the command-line by going to the Start | Run window and typing binboy.exe -text

Now run a search as you normally would. All text articles are dumped to text.txt in the Binary Boy folder.

To view a text article immediately, right-click on the subject and select "View Text" on the pop-up menu.

If you're getting an error #82 in errorlog.txt while downloading files, it usually means that your download folder is filled. Windows has limits on the total number of files as well as the total space used by the filenames themselves.

Try deleting or moving some of your attachments. Also consider using the "Create subfolders for newsgroups" option on the group list editor to distribute future downloads across several folders. Remember to close your search session before using the group list editor so your changes are saved properly.

If you're getting a different error, you can send the error message to bugs@binaryboy.com and I'll try to give you a better idea of what went wrong.

Also check to see if Binary Boy accidentally included a normal text message in with the parts. You can do this by by looking for a file (not including the last one) that is smaller than the rest. For example, if each part is 50k and part 10 of 21 is only 2k, it might be a normal text article. If it is, delete the invalid file and try to find the real part that goes in that position.

Another possibility is that one of the parts really is missing but the total number seems right because you are counting part 0.

You can force Binary Boy to decode the .BBT files with the "Dr. Binary" feature under the File menu.

Windows has a limit on the total amount of directory space occupied by the filenames. You can reach this limit quickly with the long filenames Binary Boy generates.

There are several things you can do.
• Cut down on the number of incomplete parts by enabling the "File is incomplete" option on the Header Filter tab in the settings.
• Enable the "Use separate Parts subfolder for each newsgroup" option on the Files tab in the settings so the BBT files are distributed over several folders. You can do the same thing for attachments by enabling the "Create subfolders for newsgroups" option in the group list editor.
• On the Files tab in the settings make sure Binary Boy is keeping incomplete files for only a day or two.

If this doesn't solve the problem, you can send your errorlog.txt file to bugs@binaryboy.com.

Here are some things that might slow it down:

The logs are enabled on the Logging tab in the Settings.

The Folders tab in the Settings is slow. Clear it and use the history file instead (File | History).

The bandwidth throttle is checked on the Server tab in the settings.

Versions prior to 1.80 did'nt always work properly on Windows 2000. Get the latest version.

Long, complicated search and filter strings. This would be most noticable right after each newsgroup's subjects are downloaded. The pointer will become an hourglass for a long time.

A large history file (binboy.hst). It searches the history for every subject containing a filename. If the file is more than a few hundred KB, it could become a problem on slower computers.

Before it downloads a file, it checks the attachments and parts folders for a duplicate name. If you have thousands of files in these folders, Windows might take a while to search them.

Your anti-virus software might be scanning each downloaded file.

Norton CrashGuard might cause slow downloads.

When copying and pasting a server address, it's possible to copy an extra space at the end of the text. Go to the Server tab in the settings and check to see if the address has a space on the end of it. Also check your group list if you store the server address there. Newer Binary Boy builds automatically ignore any extra spaces.

The full error text is "The requested name is valid and was found in the database, but it does not have the correct associated data being resolved for.."

This is often caused by a mistyped subdomain such as new.binaryboy.com instead of news.binaryboy.com

If the server address is typed correctly, make sure binboy.exe is authorized to access the internet by any security apps you're running.

Occasionally the installer stops while copying files. If this happens, delete binboy.hlp, binboy.cnt and binboy.gid from the Binary Boy folder and run the installation again.

Binary Boy doesn't read AOL newsgroups because AOL doesn't release technical information on how to access them. You can connect to "open" news servers and commerical servers through an AOL dial-up connection though. The most recent betas can even auto dial AOL 6.0 for you with the -UseAOL command-line switch.

To find an open server, go to NewzBot.

Or for better retention and reliability, subscribe to a commercial server such as Binary Boy Newsgroups.

If the server is sending an error or if Binary Boy is crashing, you can see what might be causing the problem by creating a log. To create a log, click Start, click Run and then type binboy.exe -log and press Enter.

As you run through the steps that trigger the problem, Binary Boy will write its progress to log.txt in the Binary Boy install folder. Usually this is c:\program files\binary boy\log.txt. You can email the file to support@binaryboy.com and I'll try to figure out what's wrong.

Binary Boy can download any type of file, including viruses and trojan horses, but will not run them. You can only be infected if you actively run one of these programs. You should not run any program from an unknown source.

Binary Boy prevents downloads from overwriting your system files by replacing all slashes and colons in filenames with the underscore character. For example, a file with the name c:/windows/command.com is converted to c__windows_command.com and safely stored in your attachments folder.

Newsgroup searches - Binary Boy never sends your group lists or newsgroup search strings to anyone regardless of which options are selected. All searches except the "wildmat" newsgroup name search (Settings | Newsgroups) take place on your own computer.

DMCA - Personal information about a user will not be disclosed unless we are required to do so under applicable State and Federal laws, including without limitation, DMCA

Upgrade notifications - At startup Binary Boy optionally sends your version number, edition (Pro or Trial) and latest news item read to the web site so it can supply you with the appropriate upgrade information and news. You can disable this request for upgrade information from the Update tab in the settings so that there is no contact with the web site at all.

Email - binaryboy.com never sells or gives away email addresses. You'll never receive unsolicited mail from binaryboy.com unless there's a problem with your order or there is a change with your account.

Binary Boy Newsgroup Service

Read more and sign up to Binary Boy Newsgroups at http://www.binaryboy.com/server.php

There are plans for 2GB per day, 30GB/month and virtually unlimited with throttling at 75GB.

Monthly accounts reset on the 1st of every calendar month.

news.binaryboy.com is reset between 5am and 6am eastern time.

1,000,000 bytes. If you're posting a file, keep the sections under about 740KB to account for encoding overhead.

Monthly Limit Accounts Are On
• nyc.binaryboy.com - New York high speed, high completion server.
• phx.binaryboy.com - Phoenix high speed, high completion server.
• ams.binaryboy.com - Amsterdam high speed, high completion server.

Daily Limit Accounts Are On
• news.binaryboy.com - 100,000 groups.

Make sure you add @binaryboy.com to the end of your username. Example: username@binaryboy.com

If the server previously allowed you to connect and then rejects your password, it usually means you've reached the daily download limit on that specific server. You can still download from the others.

Yes, you can read, post and view pictures on the primary server using a web browser here For auto downloading, yEnc support and advanced search cababilities, use a profressional newsreader such as Binary Boy.