Sounds like BearShare is either totally firewalled (most likely) or cannot find a single good connection (probably both.)

Advice is to port forward a port for BearShare.

The way to do it is:

1. Set up a static internal ip address: https://portforward.com/networking/staticip.htm

(This is only your LAN address, not external ip address. Example: Router might use 192.1.1.1 and your computer might be using 192.1.1.2 or 192.1.1.5, etc. Different types of router might use very different LAN addresses. Example: 10.1.1.1. Port forward rules are based around a specific internal address. Without a static internal address, each time you reboot your computer your internal address might be different and the port forward rule will no longer work.

I would recommend using a relatively high internal address number. Otherwise if your computer is turned off, another device might steal that address and your port forward rule would no longer work because that address is no longer available and when you startup your computer it is allocated the next available address in sequential order. Other devices might include mobile phones, iPads or similar, TV's or any other household device that accesses the internet. Choose an internal number that ends with a higher number such as .30 or .50 or .125 or even .255 to be on the safe side. Example: 192.1.1.125)

2. Forward a particular port for your model of router: https://portforward.com/router.htm
Most routers will allow you to set the rule for both UDP and TCP. If yours does not then do separate rules for each of UDP and TCP after you log-in to the router's control centre. Some routers refer to the port forwarding as port mapping and some refer to it as virtual server.

3. Be sure BearShare is using that particular port, which you can find in BearShare's settings.

I will post a fresh BearShare host file at some point over the next day or two. So keep an eye out for either of these two links:
http://www.mediafire.com/folder/0t3v...s_8_compatible

https://sabercathost.com/folder/117330/BearShare

BearShare would need to be totally shutdown and not sitting in system Tray when you replace the host file.

Keep in mind the BearShare ultrapeer population is noticeably very, very low. BearShare reserves 18 peer slots (out of 26) and 37 leaf slots (out of 45) for BearShare hosts, which means most connection slots will end up being empty.

Note: if you hover your mouse's cursor over each of BearShare's red lights, a small contextual window will show that explains what each red light is telling you.