If Soulseek stills crashes, freezes or can't connect, there can be several reasons for this:

• You have firewall software installed. You need to refresh your configuration because the executable file has changed and might now be blocked. Many people believe they don't have a firewall while actually they have one installed and just forgot about it. Please triple-check.
• You have one of the products from this list installed.SoulSeek 155 or higher is NOT compatible with these products. You need to uninstall them:
  • Steganos(tm) Internet Anonym Pro
  • Steganos(tm) Secure P2P
  • XFire Instant-Messaging
  • WindowsBlind 3.x (disable theme for Soulseek)
• You have one of these products from this list installed. SoulSeek 155 or later  MAY not work with these products. You may need to uninstall them:
  • Nod32 Internet Monitor
  • ZoneAlarm on Windows 2000 SP3 or SP4
  • NetLimiter
  • WebWasher
  • Iontas PCEye2000 Parental Control
  • WyvernWorks Firewall
• If SoulSeek crashes after a few minutes, try to disable the UPnP Manager in the General Options panel.
• One of your cfg files is corrupted or too old to be upgraded : Go to the folder where Soulseek is installed (Default is C:Program FilesSoulseek), make a copy of all the .cfg files somewhere else for backup purpose. Try to delete first shared.cfg and try to launch Soulseek again. If not delete all the .cfg files except login.cfg and try to connect again.

If your Soulseek crashes even with the latest build, please visit http://www.slsknet.org/crash/drwatson/ and follow the procedure.

This article will be updated as we gather more information.

Soulseek (commonly abreviated with simply "slsk") was created to be a unique alternative to Kazaa and other simple programs for people who aren't into mainstream music and want a better way to find material by artists you don't commonly find on peer to peer programs. So basically, if you want to download a bunch of mainstream music, don't use this program. It's not for you.
If you have experience with programs like IRC or if you've used Napster back in the day, this should be pretty easy for you to get the hang of. Slsk is unique in many ways though. It's all based on the user. You download from other users and you gain respect by other users by respecting them through many ways. I'll try to guide you through this as we go on. It helps if you're already pretty knowledgable with computers or are good at learning new programs. If you're not, don't worry; this guide is written for idiots like you.

Part One - setting up

In this guide, I'm using soulseek version 156. If you don't have this version, you can get it from the Soulseek home page. The version doesn't really matter, but it's a good idea to always use the newest version.
Before you even start the program, you need to do a few things. Open up "My Computer" and open "Local Disk" which is your C: drive. When this opens, you'll see a bunch of folders like "Documents and Settings" and "Program Files". What I want you to do is create a new folder (right click > new > new folder). Name it "slsk". Open that folder and create two new folders in that. One will be called "incoming" and the other one will be called "music". If you're using slsk for other things (like audiobooks, video files, etc) you can use that instead of "music". Or you can simply call it "media" which covers all bases. It really doesn't matter though. For now we'll assume you're downloading music.
Anyway, you may be asking what each folder is for. Your incoming folder is where all of the files you download, or "incoming files", will go. Your music folder is where you move the files to when they're completed downloading. You see, with soulseek, you usually download complete albums instead of single songs. Albums are seperated by folders. Each album will have its own folder, and so on. Of course, you can download single files, but you usually download complete albums because... well, why not? But anyway, we'll go back to this later.
Now that we have your folders set up, we can move on.
Assuming you have slsk installed, open it up. The first thing you encounter is a box asking for a username and password. If you didn't know, everything on slsk is case sensetive and two users can't have the same username. So put whatever you want for a user name. I put my own name, all in lowercase letters. So my soulseek username (for the time being - this isn't my actual username I always use) is "nick beauregard" without the quotes.

Now that we are done with that, let's set up our sharing folders. Click on the button, at the top, called File Sharing.

A box will open up. This is where you select the folders you want to share with other users and the folder where your downloads go to. The first thing we'll do is click "select save folder". A box comes up and we will select our incoming folder. Now, select "add shared folder". Find your "slsk" folder and hit okay. Now, after you click okay, a box will come up asking for the access level for this folder. Right now we'll stick with "Folder is accessable to all". I'll go into details about this and what access levels are all about later on. For now, it doesn't matter. Finally, we need to decide who we'll accept uploads from. Now, this is a bit tricky. What this whole portion of the program does is allow other users to upload to you, rather than you downloading from them. So, say you have a friend who uses slsk and he has a new album he wants you to hear but you're asleep when he wants you to download it. Well, with this feature he can upload it to you without you doing anything. But of course, you don't want to just accept uploads from anyone... that can be dangerous. So we're given a few options: no one, people in your userlist, people in your uploads permit list, and everyone. Right now, let's just select no one because this isn't a part of the program that we want to deal with right now. So your file sharing settings box should look like this right now:

So let's look at our downloading and uploading settings now. Click on your Transfers window if you're not there. You see there are two big areas. The top area is for your downloads, and the bottom is for your uploads. And on the right side is a column of settings for your downloads and uploads. Your Max D/L is the maximum amount of files you can download at a time. Remember, you can't download more than one file from a user at a time. So this means, 5 files from 5 different users at a time. The files that aren't being downloaded will be in a queue until the file ahead of it is done downloading. Your Max D/L KBPS is the maximum kilobytes per second you can download at. Setting it at zero means that it's unlimited. This is good because it lets you take full advantage of your connection's speed while downloading.
Your Max U/L is automatically set at 2. This means two users can be downloading a file from you at a time. If you have a slow connection (such as 56k), set this at one. If your connection is average (normal cable/DSL) keep it at 2, and if you're on a very high speed connection (uncapped cable, T1, etc.) set it at 3 or 4. Your Extra list user U/L is a bit complicated. You see, you can add users to your "list" similar to a buddy list. These users are automatically ahead in your queue when uploading your files. So, if you set slots for them, they get priority because these slots are not public. Anyway, let's make the Extra list user U/L set at 2. So you can have two users uploading from you publically, and two users from your list downloading at the same time. If you're on a slow connection, set it at zero. This means no one on your list gets priority. If you're wondering what this whole "user list" thing is all about, I'll explain later. Anyway, your settings should look like this (or a bit different if you made changes I noted):

Now we have the basics of setting up slsk finished. You can take a look at the general options by going to Options > General Options and taking a look at those. The options there are either self-explanatory or unimportant for the most part. You really shouldn't need my help on those.
Part Two - downloading an album
So now that we have the basics set up, let's have some fun. We're going to download an album and I'll show you what's happening as it downloads as well as what to do after it downloads. You may not realize it, but searching for files is very complex at first. Hopefully I'll guide you well.
Click the Search Files button. The album we'll be searching for is called "Some Album" by the band "Some Band". It doesn't matter if you've heard of them or not, or if you like their music or not. We're searching for this album right now as an example. In the search bar, type in "Some Album Some Band" and click search. You're probably going to get a lot of results very quickly. So after a minute or so, hit "stop search" and we'll work with the results we get. Another reason we stopped the search is because slsk takes up a lot of memory and when you get a lot of results for something as popular as this album, you may get a runtime error and slsk will crash. So when you think you have enough results, you should stop the search. Anyway, here's what I got for results:

Obviously, your results will be much different. But what you learn from my results should be fine with whatever yours are.
My results gave me a variety of people to download from. There are a few interesting things to be noted. The first is the difference between the results in black, and the results in gray. The files in gray mean the user who supplied the results has a queue. If the files are black, there's no queue. So basically, you're going to have to wait in line a while for your downloads to start if you're going to download from someone with a queue. You can see the length of the queue by looking under the "In Queue" tab. If the queue is over 200 or so, you'll be waiting a long time, especially if the user has a slow upload speed. If the user has a queue of about 10, 20, etc your downloads should start rather quickly. If you haven't figured it out, the queue is the amount of files a user has waiting to be uploaded. Simple as that.
So let's sort our search results based on the speed of the user. You do this by clicking on the "D/L Speed" tab.

Lucky me! The first few users who have the complete album have no queue. This isn't always the case, so be aware of that. But for now, I'm going to download from the user who's on top. Now, I'm a lazy guy. I don't want to have to click on each file to download the whole album. So I'm going to right-click on one of the files, and select Download Containing Folder. This allows me to download the entire folder with all the tracks of the album. This is good for so many reasons and it makes things so much easier when it comes to sorting out your incoming folder.

Okay, so let's close the search window, because we don't need that anymore, and open up our transfers window.

Two of our tracks have already finished downloading. The third is downloading at a nice speed. This is the end of this part of the guide. When the album finished downloading, come back and read on.

Part Three - keeping things organized

Alright, the album has finished downloading. This is where things take a creative turn on your part. Organizing your files. Everyone on slsk has their own way of keeping things organized. And to gain respect from other users, you better keep your files organized and neat. So I'll help you out a bit and you can decide what to do later on when you grasp the idea of organized files.
Go to your incoming folder. You'll see a folder called Some Album or Some Band - Some Album or something similar. This is the "containing folder" that we downloaded. Soulseek automatically created a folder identical to the one the user you downloaded from has and downloaded the tracks to that folder. So if you open the folder, you'll see all the tracks in there for you.

What we want to do is take that album out of your incoming folder, and put it into your music folder in an organized way. So follow these steps:
1. drag the "Some Album" folder to your desktop
2. if it's not already named this, give it the name "Some Band - Some Album" without quotes
3. open up your music folder

4. drag "Some Band - Some Album" to it your music folder
5. pat yourself on the back

What we did was the basic steps of organization. Here's where that creativity I was talking about comes in. If you're into a lot of genres of music, you may want to sort the music you download by genre so you, and others, can easily navigate your files. So let's do that. Even if you don't like these genres I'm going to use, just follow me so you can understand. Open up your music folder and drag your Massive Attack album to the desktop for a while. Create the folders I have below inside of your music folder.

What you now have is 3 folders for three basic genres of music. One for electronic music, one for rock music, one for hard rock music. I'm pretty vague with genres because I hate overusing them. But it's up to you how you organize your files. Anyway, drop your album into your electronic folder or whatever is the proper folder for that band.
Your creativity comes in when you decide how you want to sort things. Some people do it alphabetically, some by genres, some in other ways too. It's all up to you. People like seeing other users who keep things well organized. And even though it can be a hassle organizing things all the time, it pays off well in the soulseek community.
There are plenty of programs out there to help you sort it out! Consider using the utilities at http://www.musicbrainz.org to classify and organise your music.

Part Four - browsing

So you want to take a look at other users' files, see how they organize, see what they're sharing, etc? Well, the great thing about slsk is you can browse the files of other users. It's great... especially when the user you're browsing has organized files.
To browse a user, right click on their name and select "Browse Files". Below is someone's files who I'm browsing. As you can see, they sort all of their music by genre. Again, I've protected the privacy of the user and all the other things that need blacking out. Anyway, here's an example of organized files.

By clicking the little + sign, you get the subfolders, which means, any folders that are in the folder you're in. So, let's see what happened when I see what's in this user's "triphop" folder:

As you can see, this user has very nicely organized his files.
Browsing users makes it easy to find an album you're looking for. It's a good alternative to searching when you're just looking around for various albums.

Part Five - list only?

One of the controversial features of soulseek is the ability to be "list only" which means only users who are in your userlist can download your files. If you don't know where or what your user list is, I'll show you mine below. This is the userlist for my primary username, not the one I created earlier.

I scratched out the users for privacy and tried to make it obvious where the userlist is. Anyway, you can add someone to your list by right-clicking on their name (anywhere... in a chat, search, room, etc.) and selecting "add to list".

Here's how the whole idea of adding people to your list works. When you're at the point where you have a few thousand mp3's and a lot of people download from you, you realize it's hard to keep up with everyone and it's only an inconvenience for them that they're waiting in your queue for such a long time. So you decide to go list only so that only people you want to be downloading from you can. Usually it's people who you know and are friendly with, people who have an impressive collection to share, or whoever else. This makes it more convenient for you because you don't have to deal with a lot of people downloading from you and it's convenient for them because there's not a long wait in line. It is, however inconvenient for newer users who are looking for music and everyone who has it is list only. This is where people have differences of opinions. Is list only mean and selfish or is it okay and only for the good?
My opinion is that there's no reason for you to be list only unless it's necessary. If your connection is slow and a lot of users try to download from you, then you should go list only. If your connection is fast, you only have a few hundred files, etc. you have no reason to. Simple as that.
If you decide to go list only, you can set your music to only be shared with listed user by clicking File Sharing, right-clicking on your shared folders, selecting set folder access, and selecting folder is accessible only users in my list.

Part Six - using the rooms

Rooms are tricky. If you're a user of IRC, you'll understand. You see, most people idle rooms. This means they stay in the room when they're gone from their computer. So when you get 40 or 50 people who idle a room, it makes other people think "Hey, I bet that room has a lot of good users" so they'll join the room and thus the room gains popularity.

The one thing you do not want to do in a room is to go in and say something stupid like "who has music for me to download?" or message every user who has over 5,000 mp3's and ask to be added to their list. Especially don't do this when you only have a few albums to share. That's annoying and stupid. To get respect in a room, you need to respect other users. The rooms on slsk aren't for people to come in asking for music, they're for people to come in and discuss the music and have a fun time chatting. Slsk is more than just a p2p program, it's a community. You find yourself meeting new friends in rooms and chatting about all sorts of things other than music. Gaining someone's respect and friendship is a better way for them to add you to their list so you can download from them.
Anyway, when you start up slsk, the only rooms that are visible to you (on the lower right hand corner) are the rooms that have at least 20 users in them. If you want to see rooms with under 20 people, right click anywhere on the rooms list and select "refresh room list". Give it a minute and it will show you all the rooms on slsk. About 85% of the rooms only have one user in them. This is because any user can create a room (by right clicking and selecting create room). Users will create rooms and stay in them hoping someone else will join, and then more and more people, and so on.
Here's a few tips for rooms:
a. stay away from rooms with over 150 people in them. Usually, they're way too crowded and it's impossible to have a conversation. Only go into them if you're looking for music or files to download.
b. to join a room every time you start slsk, right click in the room and select "toggle room autojoin"

c. the ticker is a small bar across the top of the room where users can type messages that scroll across every minute or so. You can set a message to scroll in the ticker by right clicking in the room and selecting "set personal ticker". The rest is self-explanatory
d. since slsk is popular all over the world, some rooms may be filled with non-english speaking people. So be aware that not everyone will speak english in every room.
e. Shift-click and ctrl-click work in soulseek. So selecting multiple files at once is easy. This is helpful if you accidentaly queue up a big folder or need to delete something from a queue.

Part Seven - user info and things I like

Every user has the ability to create a "user info" where they can write whatever they want and supply a picture of themselves. Many users take advantage of their info to write "rules" for users who download from them. These rules usually include how many albums you're allowed to download from them at a time and other things. Some users don't use this at all. It's completely optional and not always necessary. You can look at someone's userinfo by right-clicking their name, and selecting "Get user info".

The "Things I Like" window is pretty fun sometimes. It works side-by-side with your user info. When you look at someone's info, you also see columns of "things I like" and "things I dislike". This is self-explanatory I guess. So you should get the idea.
You can edit what you like and dislike by clicking on the "Things I Like" tab and adding things in. You can also get "Global Rankings" which shows you the most liked and disliked things on slsk, as well as global recommendations and similar users.
Mess around and have fun with this, it's nothing important for the most part.

Part Eight - general stuff

Tips

• someone being a moron to you through the messenger? Ignore them by right-clicking their name and adding them to your ignore list.
  
• want to search all the users in one room? Right-click anywhere in the room and select "Search For Files in Room"
  
• want to search all the users in your user-list? Right-click any user on your list and select " Search For Files in User-list"
  
• someone downloading too much from you and hogging your queue? Ban them by right-clicking their name and adding them to your ban list
  
• read the user info's of people you intend on downloading from before downloading anything. Often there will be "rules" that you should take note of
  
• before downloading a folder, browse the user and make sure the folder you're downloading isn't something similar to a kazaa folder where everything is in the same folder. You don't want to end up queueing thousands of files when you intended to download a single album.
• I'll add more tips the next time I update this guide*