I am having a number of problems with Limewire. They are causing much frustration and I need some answers:

1) I often get told I "need more sources" even for common songs with multiple, sometimes dozens of sources listed, and the download never even starts.

2) When a download actually starts, it ALWAYS starts up for only a few seconds then stops. Every single time this occurs. Usually the download will then disconnect and I either get queued or I get taken back to the "need more sources" message. Sometimes the download will resume, but if it does it always stops again a few seconds later. I can only download files in tiny incriments, and about 95% of all my downloads finally stop altogether before they are 100% downloaded...about a 5% success rate.

3) Sometimes downloads will automatically resume if they have been inactive for awhile, but sometimes I have to resume manually. Why is this?

4) Download speeds are invariably VERY slow despite my broadband (T1/LAN) connection. A few k/s, occasionally a few 10s of k/s, but that's as fast as they get.

5) Sometimes a song will be 80 or 90 percent downloaded, then it cuts off, and if and when it resumes, it'll drop down to 30 or 40 percent. This makes no sense.

6) Sometimes a song will appear to download completely but won't show up in my "shared" folder which is my default destination folder.

6) Often times I end up with an apparently corrupt MP3 file that stops playing partway through. It gets "stuck" at a certain point and won't play past that point.

7) Lately my computer has completely locked up/frozen a number of times while using Limewire, and earlier today I got a blue screen fatal error crash and had to reboot. This is the 2nd blue screen error I've seen in as many days.

Needless to say I am quite frustrated. These problems occur with and without my firewall turned on. I stopped using WinMX because all downloads stopped working altogether and no other program has worked either, even when I turn off the firewall. I heard something about my ISP possibly placing a bandwidth cap and also possibly using a firewall that I suspect may be blocking or imparing these MP3 sharing programs, but I'm not sure if that's the source of these problems or not.

I'm using Windows XP (haven't upgraded to SP II yet)

T1/LAN connection

Using XP Firewall and also ZoneAlarm. Have enabled port 6340 (or whichever port I was instructed to use for IP forcing). As I said, I've disabled both firewall programs and still have the same download problems.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

When LW is open, click Tools->Options & go to Bug report & click for an example (Click here to see how to do image.) In the window that appears scroll down (about half way down report) to the part that says: "Recieved incoming this session". If it says ‘True’ then LW has no problem with firewalls, but if 'False' it does have a prob.

Also see these threads for optimising LW: http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...5&pagenumber=1

http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...threadid=27036

Search & dwnld techniques (some hints)

As far as mp3 files go, try to stay away from T3 connections if possible. There's been many reports of corrupt files from T3 sources.

As far as the blue screen goes, see this link:http://www.gnutellaforums.com/showth...threadid=29269 (- it's not related to LW.)

I used to use zonealarm but i had many many problems with it causeing the computer to freeze up and it slows speeds immensly. My reccomendation, see if you "buy" mcafee personal firewall and viruscan 8 professional. It will eliminate all of your problems, at least it did mine. I used to love zonealarm, its a great program, but there is tons of bugs in it, and i had the full professional version.