Even if you have a fast connection, it may take a while to log onto the network. I use dial-up, and it sometimes took me as long as 5 minutes to become connected. But it usually never takes longer than 30 seconds. LimeWire 1.5 improved my connect time to less than 15 seconds.

It is also possible that you are connected but you don't know it. There is no bright flashing message to tell you this. :-) Look at the bottom of the window, and it will say disconnectted if you (duh) disconnected. If the button is green, LimeWire is connecting, so be patient. If it says something like 1k hosts/5k files/12 T, you are connected. Just be patient and you'll get connected. If you go to the connections tab, you can see what's happening. If there are no entries in the uppermost box, hit the connect button at the bottom of the program window. For best results, don't search for anything if there is not at least 1 T (terabyte) available.

Hope this helped. Enjoy LimeWire! :-)