it worked, the os 9 thank you for your time and expertise. thank you gnutellaforums LORD OF THE RINGS thanks again

my limewire was working fine and all of the sudden now i am having the same problem not connecting i retraced all of our steps above and everything on that note seems to be okay any suggestions.

thank you

As suggested, set LW to not connect at startup. I found that was the best way. Then after several minutes ... after all incomplete & shares loaded, go to File menu -> Connect.
With LW 4.0.x you may need to be patient. It might take a while to connect sometimes.
Last year I found some of my LW 4.0 versions also struggled on particular days. One version would connect & the others wouldn't (versions 4.0.2, 4.0.7 & 4.0.10)