I had the same problem then some. My basic Limewire works fine, but the constant barage of "Update to Limewire Pro" finally wore me down and I bought the $9.50 upgrade, figuring that if the basic works with XP, so does the Pro. WRONG! I got the same freeze up problems you did, PLUS my ADSL crashed and I had to manually remove all the limewire software, saving my music to desktop, reinstall my ADSL software, then re-download the Limewire basic.
AND, I can't find any link but this to ask for a refund of the upgrade! Good luck to you all. I am however, happy with basic and overall, I think Limewire is an okay deal.
Rodney