My particulars: I'm running Windows Vista, just recently upgraded to Limewire Pro 4.18.8 and I have a cable connection that runs through a combo modem router, but for now, the only other active machine on the network is an Xbox and until Gears of War II comes out, it won't be on.

So I've been using Limewire for a couple of years, I think it's been, always the pro version, so I'm used to my happy little Turbo blue connection bars and snappy searches. I noticed a month-ish ago they were slooooooow, so I updated and now they are virtually at a dead stop. I have to hit "get more results" multiple times just to get a handful of results. I'm not searching for anything unusual, these are simple basic searches that I've used before (e-books by publisher) and I am used to 50-100 results per search.

I have:

Added 204.11.219.225 through .231 to my filters
deleted my LW preferences
unticked my license preference box
reverted my popup box to default
disabled ultrapeer, mojito and TLS
I've reinstalled Limewire twice
I've cleaned out my shared and incomplete files
tried Frostwire and didn't do any better with that

I will say that at certain times of the day I do slightly better, but I am absolutely not even remotely close to the kind of searching that I had before. A good search is 25 results and then I have to cross my fingers, toes and eyes that I can download it.

My ISP is the evil empire Charter.

Any help will be most, most appreciated.

Just editing to add in that I also checked my router to make sure it was set up to UPnP (it is), changed the listening port (?) on LW to one of the acceptable numbers between 4whatever and 5whatever it was, deleted and reaquired the Gnutella file just for the heck of it and called my ISP of doom, who swear, absolutely swear my 10 Meg service is just fine and they're not messing with me.

I never believe Charter.

Someone posted just recently of similar behaviour by their LW. Their answer was installing FrostWire, then using LW, which suggested the Gnutella file they had was out of date. May I suggest you try replacing the one you have (yes I know you tried FW): http://www.gnutellaforums.com/connec...t-connect.html (DELETE/REPLACE gnutella.net FILE)

Something else to try: (a) Problems with the search, __ (b) Hostiles List, __ (c) In the Connections window, Cancel some of the connections. Some may be duds / spammer UltraPeers (UP's.)

BTW I have suffered same issue as you when trying same searches over multiple days. Stief suggested to me, quote:

Thanks for your response, LoTR.

Okay, redid the Gnutella file thing, installed the Hostiles list (that was a new one), already had the other IP addys in my filter list.

Just for good measure, I went over my network with a fine tooth comb and it's working perfectly for a change and my antivirus/firewall (McAfee) hasn't changed and is still allowing Limewire full access. And I do have the current version of Java (forgot to mention that). Nothing waiting to be downloaded either.

I've never been able to find a list of connections in Limewire Pro. I can see it in Frostwire, but there's nothing but a question about launching on startup under "connections" under tools in Pro. And I've looked everywhere else. It's not under any of the tabs or any of the other drop down menus that I can find. I haven't searched all afternoon and I tried an all-new one and got six results. Wheee.

I hope Santa's got an elf working on a patch and this seriously isn't my new Limewire.

Try different types of searches, & see if things are different. Your UP's might be at fault. I had this scenario the other day, but other searches worked fine, I guess I'd just been overworking the search terms I was after over many days.

Well, right after you posted this very helpful tip, I did a couple of non-document searches and got oodles of results, so success there. Then I got knocked off the computer by a monster virus of the human kind and was in the hospital until a few days ago and didn't have a chance to do searching of any kind.

So I did my first searches today for some pretty generic documents. Not by author or book title, just by publishing house, which should net me an avalanche of results to weed through. Way more than I want, but I was looking forward to this embarrassment of riches. What did I get. Nothing. Zero. Really. Nothing. Bupkus.

So I narrowed my search. Still nothing. Okay. I fired up Frostwire. One result. One. Flooding the system with my requests isn't the cause, since I was in the hospital for a week plus.

So I went through and did everything I did in my first post all over again. And nothing. Zero.

I'm a patient woman. I have a 17-yr. old son so I have to be. But I am seriously getting pissed off. This can't just be some generic problem that one or two of us is having. I know, I only paid about $35, it's not the end of the world, but I'm ripping my hair out trying to fix this thing and I'm feeling like it's MY fault that it's not working.

AAARGH (sort of menopausal vent)!

Does anyone have any new suggestions that haven't appeared on the forum, because I honest to goodness have scoured the place with a fine-toothed comb and have tried every single one of them? I would be most, most grateful.

Not sure if this is new advice, but here goes:
To see what hosts are connected, use LW's View menu to turn on "Connections." Then the tab that shows connected hosts should be available.

Hosts can be removed (and new ones should take their place). If some of those hosts are spammers, you'll not get many decent results.

In addition, take a look at the Options for junk filters. See if setting to show all results (including junk) changes the results you see. Just a thought that your junk or keyword filters may be blocking too many results before they show on your screen.

Hi stief, thanks for the help - the junk things not an issue. I added the connections tab (didn't know how to do that, thanks a bunch on that one!).

How many connections should I be looking at? Seems like the paltry six that I've had going the last couple of days isn't right. They're all UPs, but still. Seems a little weird to me. I got rid of all the hostile lists for now and once again deleted my preferences file and went through set up all over again and it still only has oh, now it's four connections. That just seems wrong, eh? Oh, and I did my check on how many connections I had at six in the morning, lunch time, dinner time, about 11 at night and 2 in the morning. So it doesn't seem to be a time of day issue.

Pro gets 5 connections to an Ultrapeer; Free uses 3. So, your connections look sort of normal. When idle, only two connections are used. Look at the "time connected" to see how long each one has been connected.

btw, when running as an Ultrapeer, you'd see ~ 32 connections to other Ultrapeers, and 32 connections to leafs (~64 connections in total).

Most of those connections will be LW 4.18.8's.

Try a "What's New" search: how many results do you see there, and how quickly do they show up?

I tried the "What's New" thing - I got about 33 results in about a minute-ish. All on 5 UPs, Leaf status. Whatever that is, lol. All have el stinko bandwidth, I'm noticing. but you're right, all but one of them is 4.18.8. Time connected is all the same, the amount of time it's been since I logged on.

I'm logged back myself as an UP (I went back and unticked the box) - so should the number of connections I see be changing? I restarted but don't see a difference. For me at least, the purpose of Pro was the UP (well, everyone elses). Speed baby, speed.

This connections stuff I don't get, sorry for being dense as a Yule log.