Doesn't make sense. A 3d game being wonky with a problem video card or old/buggy drivers I can see, but a normal gui app? If there was a problem with my card or drivers that serious, wouldn't the web browser and every other gui app be affected as well? And there are no graphics problems -- this is generic slow down, excessive RAM and CPU use, sluggish UI etc., not visual glitches or out-and-out crashes which is what video card problems normally produce.

And besides, it can't be my video card because if it were there'd be nothing I could do about it. Everything is fully up to date, drivers-wise, and I certainly aren't about to spend ~$200 replacing the actual card, given that it works perfectly with everything else on my system -- and I do mean everything. Including actual graphics-intensive games and the like, as well as normal gui apps.

If it is the graphics card, it isn't the card's fault -- it's Limewire having a spurious dependency on it, and not merely demanding that it work properly but even being gratuitously incompatible with certain brands, manufacturers, and chipsets. Which would mean you're using JNI to do low-level graphics calls and even trying to bypass the NT kernel HAL, which is a big no-no. Just use swing and forget about anything fancy!