Ok I've told you guys all the information I know but haven't gotten any help as of yet (been about 3 days). I'm kinda annoyed since LW hasn't been able to connect for a few weeks now. It makes no sense what so ever as absolutely NOTHING changed when it stopped connecting and I've tried everything I know. It pretty much totally ignores the huge path of holes I made just for it in my system to the internet.

In case someone out there can help me at at home with Windows XP a Shaw cable internet connection, a shaw firewall along with windows firewall, 1.40 GHz, 768MB of ram, the latest LW and Java, 37GB of space, (32.6GB used with the rest free) and I made sure that LW is made as an exception for everything.

Try reinstalling this version of Java. Use the JRE offline installer & remove your current version of Java before you install this one.
Java SE Downloads - Previous Release - JDK 5

If that doesn't help, try deleting LW's preferences folder when LW's properly closed. See point 3 here & also point 2 if you've used older versions of LW in the past (there could be a folder in either location).
Fixes for LimeWire
This will kill all of your settings within options, you'll have to go back through afterwards & reset things.

If that doesn't help, tell us the model of your Vonage router (LOTR did ask you but you never told him).

Shaw are known for p2p bandwidth throttling, but I'm not so sure that they block ports ( I assume you're using Shaw, because you used a Shaw firewall).

Noob:

I got the same problem going on and I haven't received help either. It's been a week without any resolve!!

OK so I did what you said first but it didn't work so I deleted my settings and now limewire won't open at all. I'm not sure why deleting my settings would help though as I don't know how to reset the settings again. Do I download LW again? I'm starting to get really confused...

Never mind I found why LW wouldn't open and let you know if it still won't work after I make a few changes.

All right thanks for all the help Birdy I finally got everything running smoothly now I just need to reconfigure some stuff and I'm set. Thanks again.

So let us in on the secrete. By you figureing out the problem, might help others also. Thanks