Maybe your antivirus or other protections were blocking the spyware from being installed.
Try the clean version in this thread instead: Sticky: BearShare has been sabotaged.

Thanks. Okay, downloaded that and it installs fine. But it won't connect.

The four lights in top right corner - first on the left flashes red and says "Hosts - not connected" and the rest of the lights are off.

I already had the port forwarding stuff set up to allow my router use BearShare.

What can I try next?

Also, just closed BearShare, then gone to open it again and got a pop up saying

"Key expired - this copy of BearShare has expired" then I can't get into it at all.

Spoke too soon. I *was* connected, even found a file and began downloading. But after about 10 minutes it gets disconnected again.

So it's back to post 3