Are you talking about manually searched files or 'Resumed' searched files? Manually searching for sources will find many more sources & thus it will promote the file to dwnld from more than one source whereas a resumed file will connect to the 1st one it can find be that a dial-up or T1 connection. Probably easier to get connected to some dial-ups b/c that might be all that's left over if it's a popular file (or/& in a queue for a better connection.) But it means a slow process. Just a possibility. But manual searching is more effective & yes, sometimes LW does have to be baby-sitted, particularly with large files. If you can imagine that it takes a much longer time to dwnld from a very large file. And during that time, some sources may go offline, b/c busy, have numerous hits for dwnlds & filling up their upld slots or sharing them. Personally I've found something similar 'at times' but not always. Sometimes the connection to them is weak & sometimes it picks up.