OK. It's been a while since I've used OS9. Time for a fresh start. Here's what I do:

Did you uninstall everything "limew" before you upgraded? I usually run the Uninstall app in the LimeWire folder, then use Sherlock to search and trash anything "Limew." (I also search and destroy the invisible files like the LW installer's ".com.zerog.registry" but I think the newer versions don't use any). That cleans out the old corrupt preference files and caches. I find the "incomplete" folder and trash the old incomplete files (some are probably corrupt: no way to know which ones) or better yet, trash the whole folder. I leave the "Shared" folder alone, but delete any downloads which don't play properly or seem untrustworthy because they may be spam or viruses. They usually don't bother Macs, but do hurt others. I'll usually restart at least, or maybe run Norton, defrag and rebuild the desktop to make sure I'm starting clean.

I run system update to see if the latest system/Java updates are available, then download the latest copy of LW Macintosh (NoVM) in your case. If you're running OS 9.2.2, you already have the current Java Virtual Machine.

(LW is going through so many major changes this last month, the uninstall/reinstall is getting to be automatic: I expect even more changes in the next few weeks as the Limewire project implements the new Java for OSX, finds/fixes many more undiscovered bugs and cleans up the GUI).

I read giving LW 60-90 megs of memory really helps on OS9 (OSX handles this automatically).

Once you've fired up the new LW, let it hash your shared files for a while. This also gives it time to find 3 stable connections (more if it decides your machine and connection can handle the Ultrapeer setting). During this time I'll also set my preferences, especially the filter that gets rid of the .html files.

When I search for my first file I use the longest name (later searches will auto-enter that name, and I can modify it easily) , and set the results column the way I like by control-clicking on the column headers (I also block the spam/virus results by cmd-click>block host). Once the lime has stopped spinning, I start a download and go on to the next search. Usually the download will start running through an invisible list of sources (holding the mouse arrow over the download brings up the tooltip list where I can see the number of alternate sources found).

Should the download run out of alternate sources, just cmd-click the search entry to repeat search, and expect that some of the files will take days to finally find all the pieces they need, some will turn out to be corrupt, but a few will succeed.

[edit] just noticed 2.9.7 isn't yet listed on the free page, but does show here: http://www9.limewire.com:82/download/2.9.7/