If you're sharing video files, they take much longer to load than say music files. But this generally happens the 1st time you add them, not every time you open LW.

That's an odd response you got. It should have been quite a consistent speed. Some variation in speed can be attributed to partial downlds, so as someone else is downlding it, you're also downlding from their partial shares. This helps speed up downlds. And if they finish downlding a chunk of data then this might affect others. Also if they complete the downld & wait for it to be verified I guess. But I'm not so sure that's the whole reason for your inconsistent speeds.

Can you give us a total description of your set up:
1. OS version? (eg: Windows 98)
2. What firewalls you have?
3. How much ram?
4. Hard Disk space available?
5. Connection type? (eg: dialup, broadband, cable, etc.)
6. Modem & router brand name & model numbers?
7. Where are you trying to connect from (home, school, work, etc.)?
8. What version of Limewire (LW) & Java do you have? (Go to LW's menu Help>About LW...) Will show both LW & Java version.
9. Who is your isp provider (Internet Service Provider)?
10. Are you sharing the connection with other computers or p2p sharing programs? If yes, please give details of set up.