OK i'll try again:

After my home pc is online awhile it starts to slow WAY down regardless of whether I have Limewire running or not.

When I click the 'connections' tab in Limewire, I always see I have eight to ten hostes connected to my pc (even when I'm not downloading), and usually only one of thoses is an 'outgoing' connection - the rest being 'incoming'.

I can understand having an outgoing host connected when I'm not downloading, because I know Limewire lets others transfer from my shared folder. However, why do I have any 'incoming' connections when I am not myself downloading?

Are the hosts shown in Limewire's connections tab *only connected due to Limewire*, or are these hosts connected to my pc independent of Limewire (ie, Limewire is just showing me the hosts that are connected to my pc regardless of whether Limewire's running or not)?

My concern is that hosts are connecting to my pc unauthorisedly, using up my resources and slowing my system down.