Okay,

I read loads of blurb on how to connect, and after trying god knows how many patches with no lick I used an uninstaller to completely cleanse my old version of LPE from my system and then reinstalled.

And hey-presto, result, connected straight away.

However, going back into limewire second time this evening resulted in return of same issue - ie limewire wont connect.

So it would seem its not a system/patch issue. Its something us. But what? Any ideas?