i figerd out few bugs here, when upgrading to the latest LW reset my connection from cable/dsl to modem and firewall icon sometimes turns on when theres no firewall, and when downloading large files even 1 at time limewire drops to 0 after few minutes or swtches to swating sources, normally i work fine as ultrapeer because i leave LW up when im gone because thats what im happy to do is share, well even with sharing on or off when a search turns up about 500 or more results limewire starts to slow and bug out

Try disabling Ultrapeer mode in the options

Limewire might be having trouble keeping connections because of the firewall issue