I think the reason it's freezing up is the amount of ram you have. The bottom of this page http://www.limewire.com/english/cont...loadfree.shtml does say 64 MB as the minimum but you really are pushing it since it doesn't leave much over for your operating system or anything else (particularly using win XP.) Java is not very RAM friendly unfortunately.

Instead of going without a firewall. It's best to configure it/them to allow LW access. See instructions here: http://www.limewire.com/english/content/firewalls.shtml

As far as your router goes, many wireless routers do have internal firewalls. If yours does it might be an idea to open a port (6346) for LW. But I think the number you gave me is a serial number & not the model number. I went to the Netgear support site & the no. you gave me is not a model number they have listed of present or past models. See Netgear Support page The model number might be somewhere else on the unit or manual that came with it.

May I ask who your ISP provider is? I just want to make sure it's not one of the infamous ones that block p2p file sharing use.

You've done all the right things & posted all necessary details so I'm impressed.
1. Configure your firewalls,
2. make sure your Java is up to date: version 1.4.x OR version 1.5 (take the JRE) (sometimes one version works better on some people's systems than the other version.)
3. Make a note of all your LW settings & then delete the LW Preferences folder. See my link in the earlier post called Fixes for Limewire. That will explain how to delete your LW Preferences folder.
4. Don't have LW set to start on System startup. Tools>Options>Advanced>System startup & make sure this is disabled. It might also be a good idea to manually connect. Tools>Options>Connections & untick this option & press apply.
5. After opening LW, wait a few mins before trying to connect. Then go to LW's menu File>Connect. Now give it over half an hour to connect.

I d/l LW 4.4 for Win and it connected fine for the first few days.Than suddenly it couldn't connect. During that time I didn't change any of the settings. Thats why I have no clue what to do next???Help plz

Try updating your Java & deleting your LW Preferences folder. Instructions here: Fixes for Limewire

Regarding the memory requirements, I think that 64MB is too small for Windows XP, given that Microsoft already recommends 128MB min to run Wndows XP. OK, XP is now faster with Service Pack 2 which reduces a lo the memory footprint of the Windows Kernel, but this is already a huge gap.

We should probably indicate 128MB min on Windows XP, 256MB is anyway very recommended to run Windows XP, even without Limewire...).

What users should do:
before running Limewire, try optimizing your system, without any running application, so that the commited memory will remain low. On windows XP, you can see the amount of committed memory in the System Monitor (an optional component not installed by default). Look also with the Task Monitor (CTRL+ALT+DEL) which process is taking much of memory or resources.

Beware of spywares/spamwares that often take huge amount of memory, notably if your system is running for long (as they are often badly programmed and constantly leak memory).

Use also some tool to check the programs that run in autostart. Many programs should not run automatically just at startup. For example, you don't need to let the Java Update process run in autostart. But one of the most frequent program that take LOTS of memory, and causes slow boot of Windows is the RealNetworks update and notification monitor. If you have Real Player installed, you can just remove the automatic notifications.
You probably also don't need to run at each boot the OSA.EXE (an "optimizer" for Microsoft Office, that loads lots of DLL and take too much time to boot).

If you're short on memory (with less than 256MB on Windows XP), try disabling the Services that you don't need (for example the Microsoft Personal web server, if you don't need to host web pages on your PC; it is not needed to run FrontPage, if you just edit HTML pages that you will test on a remote webserver).

If you don't have a LAN network (and no network printer with a Ethernet adapter that can be used in the Network neighborhood), you probably also don't need to load the Microsoft Windows Networking components (open the Network properties panel, and remove the support for shared files and printers on Windows network, as well as the Client for Microsoft Windows networks); also you may disable the support for NetBIOS in TCP/IP settings...

Disable also the Microsoft Indexing Service (this just takes huge space on your drive to create, very inefficiently, an index of the files you have on your disks, so that the Start>Search wizard will run "faster".) The indexing service also installs its own web server on your PC, and slows any file creation or modification you do.

You may also remove many notification icons installed by default with some display adapters, or sound cards (to control advanced sound effects): use the Display control panel or the Sound/Mixer instead when you really need to change something in those adapters...

In most cases, LimeWire is slow only because the native system is already slow and unnecessarily filled by tools and services you don't use or need.

Note: in the Services Administration panel, don't disable too many services, note the changes you make there so that you can restore them later if another service can't work without it.

There are some great tools on Windows to tweak your system for speed.

But avoid using the network speed optimizers. They are often not very effective and in fact may break the compatility of your network installation with some Internet services, or with some ISPs (for example, disabling PMTU discovery, or BlackHole discovery may result in dramatically slower accesses to some websites).

Note that some Windows tweaker tools will force you to disable UPnP support. This is a bad idea if you're firewalled or use an external NAT router: without it, you'll need to manually configure LimeWire so that it will accept incoming connections through your firewall, and such manual configuration, left permanent, is also a security issue as it will allow worms possibly running on your PC to work as open-relays that will steal your bandwidth... Using UPnP is *now* (with security updates) often safer than using manual configuration without lots of precautions, notably if you have an external router or external firewall that will protect your local (or builtin in Windows XP SP2) UPnP-enabled firewall.

thnx, after running LW for about an hour it connected and stayed in "Quality:Fair". Any idea why?

Hi again, and thanks for your patience. I rechecked my system and I do believe I have 512 MB of RAM.
I have the most updated Java
My Netgear router is model #RM814v3
My ISP provider is WHTV
I have done steps 3,4 & 5.
Still cannot connect. Perhaps the information I've corrected will help you to help me.
Thanks again
Mskate

Okay, I'm confused. Where do I find the settings for LW so I can write them down before I delete them? What about the compatability tab in the properties section of LW, can it be creating a problem for me? I was also wondering, why, when I go into Tools>Options the window is hardly large enough to see the Cancel, Okay, Apply, buttons and I can't resize the window. Is this an indication of deeper problems?
Thanks

Hi mskate. May I suggest your forward a port on your Netgear router to allow LW access. You will 1st need to set up a Static IP for this work. (By the way your model is MR814, not RM814. Netgear don't have any such model.) I have 2 sets of instructions. 1. Static IP & Port Forward for MR 814 & 2. Forwarding a port on MR814 And use Port 6346 or you could do the range 6346 to 6348.

Once you have succeeded doing this, try to connect to LW. Give it some time. If you're still having problem, go to LW's Tools>Options>Advanced>Firewalls & select UPnP & press Apply button. Try again.

If it still fails. Within LW, go to Tools>Options>Advanced>Firewalls & select Manual Port Forward. See Force IP instructions & sample image & following post.

* Make sure you have configured all your firewalls to allow LW's access (including XP Firewall): http://www.limewire.com/english/content/firewalls.shtml

Yes your LW settings are those in Tools>Options. If you didn't change any then they'll be set to default.

I've heard of that happening before with the window. See if your can drag it down/sideways. You may need to drag the whole interface of LW from the bottom corner to enlargen the main interface. If that doesn't solve it, then I'll see if I can locate an answer from a previous post.

Hi there,
In reading the instructions, it says to pick an ip address and remember it, is this a number I just get out of my head, or is it going to show up somewhere in one of the windows? I'm not sure about this step.
thanks
mskate