Possible fix for Limewire running slow
 

Check for preinstalled copies of Java that may be conflicting. Remove those, then reinstall with the version on Sun's site. I used version 1.4.2_10 only because it was a known good for me.

Note that it may be listed in Add/Remove programs as something other that just "Java 2 runtime environment". In my case, since it was an IBM thinkpad, the preinstaled copy of Java was listed under Add/Remove as "IBM Java Runtime".

I'm a software engineer and have used computers since 2400 baud modems were considered faster than you'll ever need. This just drove me nuts because I knew it wasn't a Java issue or that "all Java apps are slow". Or, that I needed to reformat and/or defrag in order to get it working.

Not sure why a newer version of Java would not just update the preinstalled version, but it is what caused the issue. I'm not sure if this is limited to IBM.

Hope this helps someone out there...