I took your advice and checked out the thread, then spent the next hour going in and out of various folders, deleting, re-installing, deleting...re-starting Limewire, shutting it down...back into deleting folders...over and over again.
Each time I re-started L/wire...no connection.

I was about to give up and leave it until tomorrow, otherwise I may well have thrown my pc out of the window.
I opened L/wire one more time and what do I find...5 green bars.

I'm not the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to computers, yet I'm not hopeless but I have no idea what I did as I tried so many different options. I'm gonna leave it running for a while. I'm afraid to close it just in case it goes back to being a stubborn *** again. Thanks for the help.