Limewire does NOT contain ANY instruction to change the video settings. It will run in the current display mode, if it can, or there will be an error message if this is not possible (I have never seen that).

The only possibility is that the Limewire installation or the Java installation is corrupted (by virus?) so that this is not genuine Limewire or Java running but another software.

There may also exist a problem in the display driver, if it's not certified compatible with DirectX on Windows (some Windows drivers are bogous, and only support a subset of the DirectX API, notably those many "tweaked" drivers that were made to enhance the display speed of some games, but worked only on a old DirectX version, or only with OpenGL...)

Java's Swing (and then Limewire) needs a correctly working display driver, or it may fail, notably when attempting to render some bitmaps (this is not the fault of Limewire but of Java in general). If you are not sure, try loading one of those Java graphic or games demos on the Sun website, as well as demos using common GUI interfaces with menus, icons and so on.

It's highly probable that this problem does not come from Limewire itself, but from a compatibility problem between his installed Java version and his installed display driver.

To make sure: verify your system upgrades, the version of your display driver for your system, then visit Java's web site:
http://www.sun.com/getjava
then try one of those demonstrations.
Then attempts to reinstall LimeWire if one of its installed files got corrupted.