i have had the ball of death too whilst loading components. i am running 10.1.5.

however i have been sucessful in booting LW by hovering the mouse over the word Limewire in the menu bar before it displays ‘loading components’, you can even click on the menu too! I found this works and 3.5.7 (or should that be .8?) is pretty good once its running, even on a 56kbps modem.

hope this is a help to other hanging users

Richard