Gnutella Forums - Free Limewire

First off, these are my specs:
2.6 gig 64 dual core amd
4 gigs ram
cable internet connection
windows 64 os

When using the free version of Limewire it was hit or miss with how strong my connection would be. I do have a firewall, but it did not affect connection. If I only connected with 1 green bar, it would not display any results for any searches. It would even pop up a window explaining that Limewire wasn't fully connected to the network and to expect few results. The times that I got 3 up to 5 green bars of connectivity, it worked great. Many results to searches and quick download speeds...so I know that it has the ability to work well on my computer.

I recently decided to get Limewire Pro because I was tired of the times of only getting 1 green bar of connection speed and being unable to run effective searches. After paying for, downloading and installing the client, It seems as though my performance has actually gotten WORSE. There are still times that I connect with only 1 green bar, thus not allowing effective searching. Also, I've never once so far gotten above 3 green bars. When I type in things to search for, absolutely no results appear. The times that results do appear, there will be very very few. As a test, I would type in items that I knew were popular and should return a lot of results (ie a popular band name). They would display 0 results. Even things that I've downloaded in the past with the free version were now not being displayed at all.

Any ideas on what's causing this? I should mention again that when I was using the free version of the client it seemed to work better than the Pro version. My internet connectivity is also not the issue here. I regulary download from other sites at over 500kb/sec and my browsing around the net is quick.