Hi there, I've had intermittant problems with my connection for a while. I have limewire on both my mac ibook G4 for about the house and my PC upstairs which I do the vast majority of my downloading on.

OS VERSION
Windows XP
Firewall
There's one on my router Linksys WRTG54 v1.1 (I was told others would conflict with it and it was adequate enough)
Ram?
256mb Ram
Hard disk space
Approx 190gigs
Connection Type
Broadband 4gb connection (is that the information you want) Via my router Linksys WRTG54 v1.1
Connecting from
Home
Limewire+java version
LW 4.12.6 Pro Java 1.5.0_09
ISP provider
NTL (UK)
Simple test
O.K. (your test worked)
Are you sharing the connection with other computers or p2p sharing programs?
Not that I'm aware, only the mac downstairs but that is running at 105kb/s straight away when I try Limmewire (that's with the PC running at the same time)
Is this a your 1st try at FW or is this a new problem with an experienced user
I have no idea what FW stands for, though I'm assuming you mean Firewall!! I wouldn't class myself as an experienced user.
Do you see a brick wall in front of the blue world icon at the bottom of FW's interface?
No, I think that's because I switched my router to UPnP (though I didn't restart the computer after I did that (would I need to do that?)

Other information
I have just had NTL come out and replace my broadband connection box (not the router) as the previous one was six years old. I wasn't sure what an average good speed was, but I didn't feel my downloads were going well, my average speed was 25kb/s.
I figured out and finally sorted my port forwarding (proud of my self there) but finally switched it to UPnP (as my router recognises that) and I got the impression that was the best way to go.
I have recenlt defragged my drives (the one I store all my files took a good 9hours to do initially) I then did a disk clean up of all the drives, CCleaned them, Adawared them and degragged again just to be retentive.
I have played with msconfig so only the programmes I know I want on switch on at the start up of my computer, but still it all seems to go slow.
Is there anything glaringly obvious I'm missing?
The reason I ask this is because I tried Limewire on my mac and got a 104kb/s connection straight away, whilst the PC struggles to get above 30kb/s, so I know something must be wrong sommewhere.
Can anyone help?

OK, I really should be in bed but this is bugging me.
I went through all the little bits I sort of know on this PC and checked my ip addresses (ipconfig /all) then checked that with my connnection properties and I was one digit out on my default gateway.
So I changed that and booted up Limewire again. The download kb/s shot up to 250kb/s and I almost leaped with joy. But by the time I'd logged on to here to say I thought I'd resolved it, it had dropped right back down to 0kb/s !!! Which makes me think it is something I've failed to configure here. Anythoughts would be aprreciated still because my technophobia is annoying me now (and stealing my sleep)

Whoever sold you the wrt 54 needs a kick up his butt. They have firmware problems. Linksys are a very, very good brand but the 54 series & particularly the wrtg54 are "lemons". So if he told you it would be adequate he deserves to lose his job because he obviously doesn't know about the product properly. wrtg54's are reknown to be unreliable in UPnP mode, & also sometimes unreliable even when port forwarded. Someone who used one & had a fix http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...843#post196843 but that's only for people who know what they're doing.

If switching to UPnP, normally best to save settings, not sure about linksys but some you need to reboot the device to save settings properly. My initial gut reaction to your post was it is the linksys device being unreliable which is your problem. I might be wrong. But with the no. of wrtg54 or just linksys 54 router postings here with problems ... all same or similar symptoms ...

Would that explain the fact it works brilliabtly (wirelessly) to my mac and not when connected via ethernet to my PC
(I'll go check that link too)

God I hate coming on these sites and asking stupid questions!!
Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyway. It looks like it's worked. I followed the firmware upgrade instructions and even entered the source code as per instructions.
I don't want to tempt fate, but it's looking bloody good
Thanks guys (and I say that in the sense I've read a lot of posts before posting myself and in the process of twiddling and tweaking and hopefully enhancing performance, learned something too)
I'm not holding my breath yet though

To learn more about high speed settings within LW see Optimising LW

Glad to hear you worked out the * of the firmware. Didn't think you'd do it. But I read from that link & another forum it works well if you do it properly. Hope it works well for you from now on.

can someone explain to me (like they might a child) what this is all about?