Searches do work better when your LW is connected properly to the network.

Your symptoms actually sound like you are connecting as an ultrapeer which is much much slower to connect than the usual Leaf mode. As an ultrapeer, you need to be connected to about 22 peers I think it is before searches will work properly & 26 to say you're fully connected turbo-charged out of 32. You can check your status via the menu bar -> Tools -> Advanced Tools ...

This will also tell you if you are firewalled and how many if any peers you are connected to.

If you were not connecting as an ultrapeer & it shows a firewall message, then I recommend looking at: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/connec...t-connect.html

BTW LPE works better after a clean install. (ie: removing any previous LW preferences, just keeping the downloads.dat file.)

Edit: oops I didn't realise birdy had replied. I was distracted for a while. lol