[Beginners Tutorial] How To Get Started With Newsgroups ( Nzb )

[Chimaera]

There is much written about Newsgroups on the net and many confusing directions of how to use this program and do it this way etc etc

So ill give you the easiest way i know to get started
First of all you do NOT need to pay for a newsserver to use newsgroups which is a common misconception.

There are really only a few bits of software you need to make it work and they are free

I currently just use my service provider for my news server which give 10 days retention ( this means they only hold the news item for 10 days before removing them), if like me you download straight away this should never be a problem.
The trick is to find a site where the releases come up straight away and get on them asap so you have finished before the 10 days run out.

There is a lot of real tedious reading on how to use newsgroups but i would suggest a simple approach as follows.

1] Programs
For starting off i would suggest

Grabit for downloading the files

[COLOR=DarkOrange]http://www.shemes.com/[/COLOR]

QuickPar for checking the files

[COLOR=DarkOrange]http://www.quickpar.org.uk/Download.htm[/COLOR]

Winrar For File Extraction (But you probably already have this one)

http://www.rarlab.com/

Choosing a News Server

Choice 1: Use the news server maintained by your ISP.

Most ISP's maintain a news server that they allow their subscribers to access. Some are very good servers carrying most newsgroups and have high completion rates.
Completion is simply the percentage of messages that make it to the server (low completion means a server is missing a lot of messages making downloading very difficult). The problem is that many ISP's neglect their news server and therefore have low completion rates. There are, however, many ISP's that have wonderful servers running - fast and high completion rates. The only way to know is to find out what the address of your ISP's news server is and try it out!

A news server may require you to log into it using a user name and password.
Usually the news servers run by ISP's do not require you to log on using a user name and password because they assign you your IP address (your unique internet location address) and the server automatically accepts only those IPs it recognizes.

To find out if your ISP has a news server and to find the IP address go to the customer support section of their website and search for "news server" or "nntp". If their website doesn't help, give them a call and ask whether they have a news server and what the address is. Bargain ISP's (such as Netzero and Juno) generally do not maintain news servers.

We shall be dealing with choice 1 in this tutorial

Choice 2: Use a premium usenet server provider.

There are many reasons for deciding to use a news server that you have to pay to access. You may have an ISP that doesn't have a news server. Your ISP may have a news server, but it isn't worth much because it's slow, or has a low completion rate, or doesn't carry the binary newsgroups. You may have a relatively decent news server and want a cheap news server that you can access that can fill in the missing files from your normal news server. Whatever your reason, these servers can be GREAT to awful. Usually in this market, as most, you get what you pay for. And most times you can get what you need at a reasonable price. When you sign up for one of these services they will tell you what the name of the server(s) is and issue you a user name and password that you must enter into the news reader.

Basically these servers hold the files usually for nearly a year and you use your normal internet access and download from them similar to how you would use torrents or rapishare.

So lets install Grabit and have a try.



Here is Grabit in the folder you downloaded it to, (Double Click the file.)



Click " Next "



Select " I accept the agreement "
And Click " Next "



Choose where you want to install it to, Then Click " Next "



Click " Next "



A] Choose what you prefer.
B] This one is important so that when you download a nzb file Windows knows what to open it with.
Click " Next ".



Click " Install "



Wait whilst it installs.



Click " Finish "

Ok that deals with the installing of Grabit.

Lets have a look at the settings.



A] This is the address of your news server.
B] If you have a premium account you will need to use this section otherwise leave alone.

When you run it for the first time it should ask you for you NNTP server, this is a news server, i am on virgin media so i would put news.virginmedia.com for mine, visit your service providers news section to find out yours.



Needs to be ticked.
Click "Finish"



Now if you entered you news server details correctly you will see this message.
A] It has to be correct otherwise it cant get the list of the groups your server holds.
B] This blue spike is when you connection was active and downloading the group list.

If it does not then in the left column you will see a little computer icon, Right click on it and choose add server.




Profile Name: PUT HERE WHAT YOU WANT TO NAME IT if on Virgin then name it Virgin and so on.
A] Hostname: PUT THE SERVER ADDRESS HERE If on Virgin put news.virginmedia.com
B] Leave the port at 119
C] Only use if you have a premium account with a login access
D] Dont have too many connections, i restrict mine to 3 on a 10mb service so basically it runs quickly

Click OK

If it dosent connect at all then you either
A] Havent set the server details correctly
B] Have a router blocking port 119 (you may have to open a path for it to get though)
C] Have a service provider that has a lousy newsgroup service (unfortunatly this does happen)

I will not bother with the different tabs etc, you can work that out for yourself.

Ok now to the files you need to download
Goto

[COLOR=DarkOrange]http://www.newzleech.com/[/COLOR]

A] Type in the name of what you are looking for.
B] Click this button to begin the search.

Newzleech isnt the only nzb search engine do some looking ;o)



A] The search term.
B] The button you just clicked.
C] The results.
D] Tick the box of the one you want to download.
E] Click Get NZB to start the download.

Important ones to notice are the colums % and Age
If it has a very low % dont download it and if your news provider only has a 10 day retention (i.e. how long they keep the files) and the age column says 12 days then dont download it.



A] The file you asked for.
B] Click save file.
C] Click Ok.



A] The file you requested Double click it to start Grabit and it will download it to your chosen folder



A] The unpacked file
B] The file Grabit downloaded

There is an awful lot more to newsgroups but this guide should help you get started

[MetalKettle]

Brilliant m8. Should help alot of people out!

[caveman_nige]

Well thats your second post thats become a stick in the General PC Chat section.. Nice work dude... Much appreciated...

[caveman_nige]

BTW Haynes don't do a manual for my car, so for your next project.......... pmsl

[Bulld0g]

Excellent tut m8. That will help out a lot of noobs. Very esasy to understand

[Lainie]

give that man promotion. well done again chim.

[pjtaff]

im a bit new to these news groups installed the program got that running if i want to download a game i notice that there are only small files do i have to find all the parts to that games and how do i know how many parts a game will have

sorry if this sounds like a noob question but i am a noob who doesn't really know what he's doing
but i am trying

[Chimaera]

The nzb file m8 contains the record of all the parts you need to download and as long as tick the right boxes on the website i gave you you should get all the parts



A] Notice the amount of parts because i choose a larger file.
B] You can see the extra parts by unchecking the cross.

Hope this helps

[pjtaff]

The nzb file m8 contains the record of all the parts you need to download and as long as tick the right boxes on the website i gave you you should get all the parts



A] Notice the amount of parts because i choose a larger file.
B] You can see the extra parts by unchecking the cross.

Hope this helps

many thanks for this tut have now got it up and running fine

just wondered could you answer a couple of questions i use torrent sites what is the advantage of a newsgroup over torent
i take it you can still pick up viruses and nastys on these news group sites
and a stupid quetion whats the chances of getting caught using newsgroups

but on the plus side i downloaded a 800mb file in about 12 mins now that is bloody fast for me

many thanks for your time and just hope you got the time just to clear up these few questions

[Chimaera]

torrent by thier nature are visible and easy to trace big movie and music producers watch torrents a lot more then they do with nzb.

nastys etc still a chance but slim because they are hosted by groups in the main wheres torrents lots of people (kids) mess about with the files.

Getting caught? well nothing is truly safe m8, as to torrents become a member of a private torrent site where you have to be invited thats a bit safer

nzb try to use https where possible on the sites that support it, on the whole i would say nzb is compatible with rapidshare for safety

[pjtaff]

many thanks for this info i have installed peer guardian 2
read somewhere that this helps to block people seeing what your downloaded just wondered do you know much about this and if so is this the best program to use or have i just been ill advised
and also is that the norm to get download speeds of 1100kbs cause iv;e never hit them speeds b4
once again many thanks for your time in helping me and hope fully i can pass on this info to others

[zoosh]

Newsgroups or Rapidshare?

Hi guys
excellent tutorial I set it up but for some reason after a few hours I could see no activity in grabit. at first it was downloading pretty well then just seemed to stop. I've not investigated it as yet but my question is what is best for the occasional downloads of movies and games.

I've been using Torrents so far and had no problems but lately have been a bit worried in case my downloads are tracked by my ISP virgin.

games are all around 4gig so so along with avi movies on average i would say i download around 10gb. What do you think is best option? should i continue with torrents?
your help is much appreciated.