Well, the 30th time was a charm.
I re-deleted the Preferences folder (literally, for the 30th time). And, like before, replaced the gnutella.net file.

This time it worked. I started seeing connections (in the Connections tab/view). And I tried a search and it returned items...amazing.

But, still see the firewall icon in front of the globe, whereas on my XP desktop (on the same home network running the same CA Security Ste and Windows firewall) I do not see it.