This applies to Windows only.
qBittorrent is a nice and free peer-to-peer client in the file system super highway of the interweb. You find a file or resource that interests you and click a magnet link. A few minutes later you have a file that may or may not be overflowing with computer melting viruses and trojans (we'll talk about how to deal with that in a later article.)
A minor annoyance with qBittorrent is that sometimes it won't associate with magnetic torrent links. There are two reasons for this and both of them are bugs in 3.1.10 (and probably earlier) versions of qBittorrent.
1 . The registry is written wrong for linking magnet file links, browser clicks, and qBittorrent.2. The setup in qBittorrent is wrong when it comes to linking magnet files, browser clicks, and qBittorrent.
Fixing qBittorrent
Open qBittorrent and go to: TOOLS > OPTIONS > BEHAVIOR where you'll see two File Association options:
The Magnet links option is broken- it does the opposite what you expect because of the qBittorrent bug. Unselect it and do not say "yes" when qBittorrent asks you if you want to associate magnet links with qBittorrent. If you do, you will in fact unassociate magnet links instead of associating them.
Shut down qBittorrent after you make this change.
Note: I'm not sure if the .torrent files association is broken or not; I use magnet links exclusively.
Fixing the Registry
Next you need to fix your registry. To open your registry, click on the start button and type REGEDIT and hit enter.
Even though messing with you registry can crash your computer and cause earthquakes in Nebraska, you're safe if you don't mess with the wrong stuff. Follow the instructions below exactly and double check before saving changes.
1. Open HKEY_CURRENT_USER > SOFTWARE > CLASSES > MAGNET > SHELL > OPEN > COMMAND
2. The DATA section in the right pane will show a URL to qbittorrent.exe. If there are any forward slashes in the DATA section, change them to back slashes.
forward slash: /
back slash: \
My original entry was:
"C:/Program Files (x86)/qBittorrent/qbittorrent.exe" "%1"
I changed it to:
"C:\Program Files (x86)\qBittorrent\qbittorrent.exe" "%1"
Close Regedit after you've made this adjustment and like me, you should be good to go, ready to click on magnet links at anytime.
