Birdy,
I have my xp firewall turned off and my norton firewall configured to accommodate LW. As far as my modem goes, your guess is as good as mine. It's my cable company's property. I don't have a manuel for it. If I were to delete the latest version of LW and reinstall my 4.10.3 v. , would i recover all my downloads? I'm getting pretty fed up with this new version.

Providing your saved folder is still in a safe place (the default location is C:\Documents and Settings\your name\Shared). They're safe anyway, just as long as you haven't moved them to some strange location where they might be deleted if you uninstall your current version (some people have put their saved folder in weird places)!
I've gone back to old versions before & never had any trouble.

Birdy,
If I change back to a former version of LW I'm more concerned about losing the files awaiting download. I have already depleated the shared files in my computer. I only have about five files left there. Do you know if I will lose the files awaiting download or will I be able to retreive them? And if I haven't thanked you for your help before now forgive me and accept my thanks at this time. I truly do appreciate your help.

If you back up the .bak & .dat files (you'll need to back up both, save them in a safe place) in your incomplete folder, you should be able to copy them into the new incomplete folder (when you revert back to the old version)... that should let your incomplete downloads resume from where they left off.
I haven't had to do this myself but from what I've read... if you lose the .dat & .bak files then your download will have to start from 0% again

Birdy,
??????????????. I am soooo lost now! JUST WHAT EXACTLY IS A .BAK & .DAT FILE? And how do you back them up? I think I may have mentioned this before, I am not a computer whiz. More like a computer fizz...lol. If you know how to complete this operation I would appreciate the input. If not, maybe you can direct me to some one who knows.

It might be easier for you to just copy the whole incomplete folder to a safe location & when you've installed the older version of LW, replace it's incomplete folder with the copy you've made.

Maybe you should send a PM to Lord of the Rings as he's the expert.
Using the forum search to look for older threads about this might help you to find some answers, too.