I think i've got kinda the same problem. 127.0.0.1 ( localhost ) is listed as my IP adress. I explicity changed it to my actual (outside world internet ) IP adress, my local address, and several other adresses just for the hell of it.

No matter what it's listed as, Autoconnect still won't try and connect me to any sites in the host catcher.

On the plus side, i can still connect to sites manually by clicking on a host catcher IP and hitting connect, but it's a tedious process getting a solid connection.

I can still get a list of sites from a host to fill the catcher up too. Just seems like that little checkbox for auto connect doesn't seem to realize it's checked.

I had phex running quite well, was impressed with the whole gamut and was very much converted from limewire up until this happened. Had an uptime of several hours, and now no amount of quitting or rebooting seems to fix it.

I didn't notice any extra processes running, but them i'm Running OS X so maybe it's not handled the same.