Many thanks Birdy.

I have broadband - according to Limewire my connection is turbo charged - nice! I have taken your advice and paused all but 2 downloads. At the time of writing one is downloading from 2 host at 2kbs and the other from 2 hosts at 5 kbs. After reading as much as I can about downloading from other posts on this forum ( some really excellent information...creep, crawl...) I checked my Windows Firewall; Limewire is an exception so I don't want to disable the firewall.

I will keep fingers, eyes and any other bits crossed.

Cheers

Falstaff