Ok I posted this question already but I was unregistered so here it goes again.

I've been doing some research on here about Bandwidth and understand what's going on a little. However at home I have Cable and an average connection of 512kbs download speed. As soon as I start LimeWire with 4 connections my download speed goes down to about 10kbs thus eliminating me from downloading anything.

Why is this and is this normal for LimeWire to consume that much bandwidth just to run?

Are you sure that no other program is running in the background? are you only connected to ultrapeers? did you check "Disable ultrapeer mode"?

Yes nothing else is running, and I have not check that option.

There is nothing downloading and nothing uploading. I'm using the tool in www.pcpitstop.com to monitor the download speed but it's obvious when it loads, I cant surf the web at all. As soon as I close the program everything goes back to normal.

It has been like this forever, even back when I was using version 1.7.

I'm also using windows XP just incase that has something else to do with it.

I use LimeWire all day long from work with no problem but at home it kills all my bandwidth.

Maybe that's your provider? Also, check out the amount of bytes sent\recieved to see if LimeWire sends and recieves data in such large quantities.