The fact that you're on dial-up has nothing to do with Limewire's performance. This affects all Gnutella users and, as you have found, almost every download now stalls during downloading.

Let's start with uploading. There are a number of reasons why you may not see files taken to 100%. For example, the other user may have begun a grouped download and only a small percentage of the whole is required from you. Or the other user began five downloads from different sources and one of the others finished quickly so the remaining downloads were killed. Or your upload was too slow for the other user's liking (if you're on a 56k dial-up modem, you will only deliver a slow rate). Or the ultrapeer through whom your contribution was being routed decided to go out to lunch and switched off his/her machine (statistics show that the majority of users are highly transient, none the least because they may billed by the minute for connect time). etc. So the fact that not many, if any, uploads go to completion may be due to circumstances entirely outside your ability to control. You could open your Preferences and check the bandwidth and slots settings. I am currently running with the bandwidth at maximum and allowing 15 slots but I have a 512k broadband account. Assuming you're running a 56k modem, you will use up most of the available bandwidth if you are actively downloading and it may be too expensive for you to leave your link up passively to allow the local ultrapeers to log you as a good potential source. In short, although you may not be sharing much (which is sad), it may not be practical for you to do much about it.

As to resume, we've been asking the developers to reinstate the facility for months but, so far, they haven't. However, as you have discovered, you should be able to get to the end of most downloads where the host stays on-line long enough by killing the download and restarting it from the same point in the hit list. You must manage those hit lists carefully (increasing the number of searches and using the manual delete of the search boxes to prevent boxes still in use from dropping off the screen). If you don't get a reconnection, leave the failed download in place and repeat the search using exactly the same typography as the failed source. If it is still on line, this will often reconnect you. As a back-up you can browse the host during the download and use that as a point from which to restart the download if the original fails (although, for a number of reasons, not every host can be browsed).