Ok... as I understand it looks like you tried everything you can... and what I would suggest...
Lets go through it to make things more clear.

When you startup and have not connected yet Phex assumes to be 127.0.0.1 (represents your local machine) in case it cant determine anything else. This is nothing to worry about. It will update once you get connected and Phex learns its real IP.
After startup Phex assumes to be firewalled until you received a incoming connection. As long as Phex thinks it is firewalled it asks established outgoing connections to try a incoming connection. If that works Phex knows its not firewalled. If that fails Phex still assumes to be firewalled, since obviously no one can connect to you, out of whatever reason (most likely firewalled or failed port forwarding from routers or such).
Usually that detection goes quite fast...

Phex uses java.exe to access the internet and act as a server, maybe you already allowed java.exe to do this when you were running Limewire.

I think I somewhere saw a link that checks if you are reachable on port 6346, when you have a client running. I will post it once I found it.

To apply the XP patch is a good idea. It allows you to raise 'Max concurrent connects' a bit below the limit you configured with the patch. Though this is not your main trouble it makes things go faster.
You can disable 'Other nearby Phex running', its only useful on LAN networks.
But overall your configuration is all right.

Gregor

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