david - just so you know, Tiscali is known to shape the bandwidth of p2p users. Search these forums for 'Tiscali' and you can see for yourself. You have problems with your general internet connection every 2 hours?

You shouldn't uninstall Limewire via add/remove programs. Use the uninstall feature.

You could try rolling back to the previous version of Java. Some are having trouble with the newest release.

Java SE Downloads - Previous Release - JDK 5

Did you try deleting your preference folder as suggested in the link provided by Lord of the Rings?