Ares

On top of the browser window you can see if Ares is still connecting or the connection is made and search is available. Remember that the amount of users on Ares is still not as much as for example K-lite.
The advice to search for popular songs is ideal to make sure Ares is working.
I often get zero results but my taste of music is dying with nowadays generation I suppose.

My only real complaint about Ares is the lack of anything but the most basic of search filters (bitrate, artist, keywords, etc).
However, it is a good p2p app, and can get nice speeds depending on availability...which is kinda still kinda spotty. Ares still hasn't really got a huge user-base yet.


And about the hash priority....
Ares will make hashes of all your files, for use in magnet links. It's just indexing everything on the network.
A good thing to do initially is to turn start Ares at night, give the hashing the highest priority, and depending on the number of files you share, it'll probably be done in the morning. After that, the only time it'll need to hash is when you add new shared files.

It could turn into a very nice p2p app if loads of people bring their shares.

:)

Recently, I seem to be having problems with Ares, too. None of my downloads will start, and none of my searches will return any results, no matter how common the query is. Ares just doesn't seem to connect. :(