The Bitzi site has been known to go down now & again.

Other thought is ... sometimes if LW has been extremely busy & on for a long time, 'a few' of its functions become slow to work .. or in some cases not work (at least on Mac OSX, not sure about windows.)

Thanks for the comment.
I have also noticed that LW can slow down the more downloads you have in progress - is this normal or is my PC maybe past it's sell by date ?
Must admit I know as much about PC's as I do about neuro surgery (and that's zilch) , however the more I hop back and forth between LW and Bitzi the slower my PC seems to function , and quite often LW freezes up completely for a couple of minutes.