do you have a firewall? it doesn't have anything to do with your browser, explorer/mozilla/netscape can't affect limewire, it would have to be a separate program... or a router, which has some kind of firewall built in. but afaik this wouldn't cuase lw to hang... at least not on windows.

this sounds like a system issue to me and these are difficult to pinpoint. possibly uninstall limewire, a clean re-instal of the systeml ('create new system folder' checkbox marked), and then re-install of limewire should take care of it. that would also allow you to install the most recent mac OS... but you might wanna check in the MacOS section of the limewire forum.

please post back here if you get it working and let us know why.

good luck!