thanks for quick reply. In answer, yes I did configure port settings thru LW firewall help page that you mentioned, and also forced the port and got a successful sample page thru port 6346.
A couple of little funny things that have happened is that sometimes, even when LW is stuck on 'connecting,' the bug report on LW will show 'true' next to 'received incoming this session. Another weird thing is that when I go to the advanced tab of 'windows firewall' to check that port 6346 is still enabled, I will type in 127.0.0.1 as the providers address, but after restarting the computer, this adress number has dissappeared and returns to my user name, although the port number has remained. I dont know if any info given here gives any more clues. Would you say it is definately the port being blocked by my firewall, and therefore I could try changing the port for Gnutella access. What is the significance of the problem occuring after I upgraded to LW 4.2.6
ps I went to the link provided but dont use AOL