Sorry, I didn't give you the right link about a Windstream firewall in my other post...here it is.
http://www.gnutellaforums.com/218807-post7.html

Just to clarify...are there no connection bars at all, or connection bars but the firewall icon's showing?

Are you running as administrator?
LimeWire 4.14.7 won't work!!!!

Right click on the LW icon on your desktop > properties > compatibility (that's for XP, hope it's the same for Vista) & run in compatibility mode for XP.

When you deleted LW's preferences folder, did all of your settings within options change? If things didn't change back to default, means that the prefs folder wasn't deleted properly.