Well, I am having the same problem in the same way. I am running 10.2.3. LimeWire 2.7.x worked OK but this started when I upgraded to 2.8.5. So, I went back to 2.7.13 and everything was OK until the 2.8.6 upgrade came out...the first time I opened Limewire and it asked during the splash screen if I wanted to upgrade to 2.8.6 (I said no) and then it froze the system after the splash screen disappeared. Interestingly, while frozen, there is very heavy network traffic over my internet connection. Unfortunately, I have only I machine so I can't login from another box and try to see what might really be going on here.

More than a little annoying. Especially since I have been leaving my system running for days at a time as an ultrapeer...if LW wants to know why there's a shortage of ultrapeers, it's because they can't even open the darn program...