if i understand correctly, you usually do get a connection, after a bunch of failed attempts? is that both at home and at work?

my guess is that at work the firewall blocks all suspicious traffic, i.e. traffic that doesn't uses the 'common' ports used for http, mail, ftp etc. You would have to talk to whoever is in charge of the network at your office and ask them about it.

regarding your connection at home: the light stays red until limewire establishes a connection. you can check in the 'connection' tab. if there's a whole bunch of hosts 'connecting' or 'handshaking', then it's probably just a matter of time until limewire establishes a connection. it can take a minute or two, the more frequently you connect, the quicker you usually get a connection. if there's nothing in the 'connection' tab, then something is wrong. always make sure that you are already dialled in when you open limewire.

regarding the search and download success: that highly depends on what you look for. some stuff is just not very widespread and you don't get many download sources. i tend to not download if there's less than 4 hosts offering the file.

i haven't used limewire over a modem connection for a while but i remember when i used to it was always somewhat painful, just because there's so little bandwidth. switching to cable or dsl would probably help get better search and download results.

hope that helps. good luck!

btw: i don't think your using explorer has any effect on the functionality of limewire, although you would get a lot less popup ads if you were using Mozilla ;-). but that's beside the point.