Removing only the Search_LV line didn't help here, I had to take out 7 before the program started.
The lines are too cryptic for me to start wondering what makes them work on win98 but not on w2k.

My first solution was to delete the whole gnotella.ini file, and when Gnotella is started it'll create a new one with default settings.

But to make it less brutal, removing the lines that start with Conn_LV, Host_Catch_LV, Monitor_LV, Download_LV, Download_Q_LV, and Upload_LV, will do the trick and Gnotella works again. They're probably all together and shouldn't be hard to find.