Thanks to everyone for the data. The one thing we really need to nail down is whether or not your LimeWire's are running as UltraPeers when you're seeing these numbers. Again, you can tell if your LimeWire is running as an UltraPeer by looking at the connections tab (which is disabled by default, but you can turn it on in the "View" menu). If you have connections that say "leaf", that means that you are an UltraPeer. In this case, you should see many connections (above 5 or 6). Actually, sending screenshots of the connections tab to me at afisk@limewire.com would be very helpful.

On the XP issue, I really have no idea what's going on. It's likely that there's a bug in the JVM, as there is theoretically no way for LimeWire to cause a native error like that because it's running java. What version of the JVM are you using? You might want to try a different one, like the 1.4 JVM, available from java.sun.com

Thanks again.