Thanks for the reply Vinnie,

I only had one instance of bearshare running. I found the problem though. I'm running Win 95 and remembered that Napster kept asking me to update my Winsock dll file. It worked fine, so I never did. (if it ain't broke, don't fix it) I saw mention of this file in the forums, and although it didn't seem to relate to my specific problem, I tried it. It worked. My connections are fast and consistant now. Talk about a needle in a haystack.

It just goes to show that one should never jump to conclusions.

Sevan