Greetings,
I've never posted to any web forum before, so please forgive me if I don't know my way around this Forum yet. I have a MAC iBook G4 with 768 MB RAM running OS 10.4.8 and Java 1.5.0. Recently I upgraded to Pro 4.12.4, and so far it stalls and freezes on all functions, including use of the LW menu bar. Opening Preferences, for example, as I went down thru the pages of Options, response time slowed to the point where I could no longer check/uncheck any options at all. I had to force quit LW. Doing an audio search, results take much longer to appear than in my older version, and then, if I try to download anything, before long the whole program freezes. I can't select anything or even scroll the search window (although I notice that uploads are happening). I'm just dead in the water. Like my old version, 4.12.4 Pro slows down everything else on my computer, but at least the old version was usable. This one is not. I know that Apple doesn't like Limewire - did they put something in the latest iTunes (7.0.1) to disable it? Is there a way to optimize my Prefs to get some use out of this program? Please help if you can. Gratefully, Jeff

What do you mean apple put something in iTunes to disable it? Works fine for me.

The most recent LW version is 4.12.6 so I'd suggest you update to this version.

Have you tried deleting your LW preferences folder whilst LW is closed? You can find it here /Users/your_username/Library/Preferences/LimeWire

If all else fails, try the beta of betas & get the "nightly" build of jum's here http://www.mager.org/LimeWire/
Which is a private unofficial beta of LW but jum does & has contributed code & ideas to the LW project.

BTW sounds to me like you don't have enough ram or are running out of HDD space or both.

Thanks, Lord. BTW, I didn't mean anything about Apple - it was just a desperate stupid joke...

As for HD space, I have 31 GB available on my iBook, and my 768 MB RAM used to be adequate - do I need more? My music, btw, all lives on an external LaCie 500GB HD. I have a lot: 42,000 songs = 300 GB. And I notice that all of it shows up in the LW Library under Shared Files - does that slow anything down?

I just upgraded to 4.12.6 at your advice. I tried a Search. Things went well for about 2 minutes. The Search window was scrolling at normal speed, I selected 2 or 3 tunes to D/L, the downloads started, no problem. Then things started to slow down. When I slected a 3rd title to D/L, I had about a 5 second delay before the file name highlited, another hang before the D/L began. It got worse from there, and a minute later everything froze. Couldn't scroll the Search window, couldn't select anything. So I left it like that to come and write to you. Any suggestions?

BTW, I don't really understand all of the Prefs/Options so I just sort of winged it. Is there an optimal array of Prefs settings to maximize performance? I'm happy to share with other users, of course.

Thanks again for the help. Jeff

Whenever I share my external Lacie drive (250 GB) it tends to slow the system down particularly (has over 100 GB iTunes music library.) Also LW doesn't always reliably read it, & I don't seem to get uploads from it using LW.

Just as an experiment, try moving a no. of the shared files over to the HDD. And share those "instead of" the external drive. Tell us if that makes any difference.

I've a suspicion it's related to the external drive constantly calling on the processor to read it by requests from LW & finder. Meanwhile anything else you might do on the computer will probably slow the process down & its reliability even further. And there may also be constant search hits to your files. Just a guess.

OK, how do I do that? When you say HDD, do you mean the internal HD on my iBook? Assuming you do, how do I move files over there? Just drag some songs from the LaCie over to the iTunes folder on my MAC? Is it that simple? And if ZI do that, will those be copies? Or will I have to drag them back?

While waiting for your replies, btw, I've been trying to get LW to perform, and it just gets worse and worse. Now when I launch it, it's frozen right from the start. I can type in a search but can't hit the Search button. Very frustrating...

Yes. Turn on the "Monitor Pane" from LW's View menu. See if the uploads are consuming all your bandwidth, and slowing down your machine. Also, beware of sharing copyrighted files.

If so, you can set the upload bandwidth in the prefs, but you'll have to find out your real upload bandwidth first. To do this, close all your internet apps (command-tab will show all that are open), then use Safari to go to a site like http://www.dslreports.com/stest .

Once you know your upload bandwidth, calculate 85% and use that number to set LW's upload prefs.

By HDD I meant your internal. When you copy from Lacie to HDD you make a copy on your computer so there's still a copy on your Lacie.

But follow Stief's advice & suggestions. This will help to find out the source of the problem. And any possible bugs.