Hi thanks for your reply. Sorry, forgot to mention I had already tried the compatibility back to win2000 (running XP pro) and still same. I have also now tried frostwire which I saw suggested on another thread, and that has exactly the same problem as limewire.
I checked my two daughters pcs last night and they both have latest limewire and latest java, one on vista home on a new laptop, one on xp pro on an old laptop, but both working fine so I'm really stumped now !!!!
help !