For weeks now my downloads have been acting much differently than they had in the previous year of my limewire usage. If a download happens to start the transfer rate will fluxuate from high to low to 0 to high to low to zero to low to zero to high etc... Eventually they will just sit at zero bytes being transferred. This happens on alomst every single one of my downloads. Anyone have any ideas or have the same problem? Any help is greatly appreciated.
Has the gnutella network become that unstable? Is the downloading from multiple hosts feature screwing with downloads? I don't know, but whatever it is it's very annoying.

I don't have a firewall set up. I'm on a very stable T3. I'm running WinXP on a p3@450 96MB RAM. It's the same computer and connection I've been using since I started using Limewire which I have been using for at least a year.

I'm having the same problem. have you figured out a solution?

No, I have not found a solution. As I keep reading more and more posts though it seems as this is a problem for a lot of people. My guess is that it has something to do with the way the network is set up.
Actually, I did notice that on my connections screen if I have at least one protocol that is 0.4 then my downloads are fine, but if all my connections are Ultrapeer than I can't download worth jack.
This has to be a software problem. FIX IT!

Ignore that last part about the protocols, but my downloads do seem to work better when all of my connectoins are not just Ultrapeers.

The thread "Always says Could Not Download" is a little more relevant and discusses the problem most of the people here have. Suggest you continue this there...

Andy