After uninstalling LimeWire 1.4b and installing LimeWire 1.6d
(7 times) I noticed in the install/uninstall program box....that
there were 2 versions of Java 2 Runtime Environment.
I uninstalled the original version (1.2.1) and kept the 1.3.1 version.
LimeWire started right up!

This is on Windows 98.