Okay, I set up port forwarding in the router to send limewire packets coming in on 6346 to automatically go to my desktop PC. (Doing this as an experiment, I didn't bother to set up any other computers on other ports.)

LimeWire is set to force the IP, using port 6346. The Windows XP firewall is set to accept connections on port 6346 for both TCP and UDP. The program LimeWire is set to "enable" (allowed) under the "exceptions" tab of the XP firewall.

Still... No... Luck...

Everything I try to download just goes straight to "Queued," and never tries to connect beyond that.

One thing I noticed is that UPnP is not configured at the moment, either in the router or in the firewall. Is this necessary? I've never messed with that before.

I do see a few incoming searches coming into my computer, though when I click on "Show incoming searches," I get a popup message/dialog box that tells me that I won't see many incoming searches, because I'm "shielded by an Ultrapeer" or something like that.

I've really reached the end of my technical ability, here. :-/ Any advice would be appreciated.

-- David

NEW INFO: 2/23: I tried booting up LimeWire on my Mac, and it works perfectly!! Tell me how this makes sense: the router is now set to forward port 6346 to my desktop PC, which is 192.168.1.203. Despite the static IP and port forwarding, and everything I can do to force the IP and allow exceptions in the firewall, there seems to be NO WAY to make my PC run limewire properly. My mac laptop, on the other hand, is set to static ip 192.168.1.202, and is using the default port 6346. Mind you, the router is NOT set to forward port 6346 to this IP address, it is set to forward it to my desktop PC. Yet, I'm downloading from LimeWire right now on my Mac with great download speeds, and my PC just sits there saying "Queued." Does anybody have ANY idea what's going on here???

More new info: In Windows Firewall, the firewall is enabled on "Network Bridge" and "Wireless Network Connection 2." Under these two settings, nothing is checked in either the "Services" or "ICMP" tabs. Is there something there that I need to check? Under "Exceptions" in the Windows Firewall, UPnP is not checked. Does it need to be?

Second though (or third or fourth or...): I turned the firewall OFF, and it still doesn't work. So, it would appear that the firewall is not the problem. NOW does anybody have any ideas?