Lend a newbie a hand please
 

Several times I have tried to download different songs to no avail. I keep getting the requery messge and a time out count down. what do I need to do to be able to down load songs and such? Please any help would be great. Thanx ahead of time.

You can't download anything that is not available at the moment. The host you are trying to download from could be busy or it could have shut down. In that case all LimeWire can and will do, is requerying the network for a similar file.

so How can you tell if they are up or not?

When your search request is answered, the host is up. In any case, I would just try another host, that has a similar file. If you have 24/7 connection to the internet, leave LimeWire running (letting it search for that file), if you don't shut it down, and try it again later, on the next day or after a couple of hours.

The LimeWire developers are working on ways to extend your search horizon, so you will receive more results for any search query, but it will take time to implement and even more time to take effect. There are many other clients in the Gnutella net, which don't have all the advanced features of LimeWire yet, and don't have the resources to implement them quite as fast. Temporarily, if you just can't find a specific file you are looking for although you want it really badly, I would advise you to try another network.