> Does HTTrack goes and scans the URLs before starting 
> to download? If so can it be switched off. I tried 
to 
> download about 13,000 distinct URLs, half of which 
> appeared to be valid, and notice an great delay 
before 
> the actual downloading take place. Now I'm trying 

It depends - if you have a LARGE file to scan, with 
many URLs, it can take some time, especially 
with "unknown" types such as .asp or .cgi files.
But with latest releases (3.01,3.02) releases, 
the "background" download should be smarter

During the download, you will see the total amount of 
bytes downloaded and the realtime transfer rate - it 
is a good information to know how many files are being 
transfered in the background