Neil:

A few things you might try --

Allow your connection to stabalize for a few minutes before you search. Longer is better.

Choose three or four star search results for your downloads.

Go to the connections tab and at the bottom of the page increase your connections to five.

If you are downloading a file and the download drops - right click the search tab and choose "repeat search". Sometimes this will help you reconnect.

If a download is running very slow try searching for another word or two in the title of the file you are downloading. Limewire will often find another host (or several more) and you can download from multiple sources at the same time.

If you have a high speed connection go to tools, options, speed - check the "disable ultrapeer capabilitys" box.

I hope this helps you.

Norm