I've found a solution that improves stability when running LimeWire 1.5 on a Win 98 SE machine. Of course, the shortcut launching bug involcing javaw.exe must be resolved first, which has already been discussed thoroughly here and should be referred to before continuing with this tweak.

Symtpoms: The program will spontaneously close or shut down without any distinguishable cause or reason, whether running in the foreground or background, searching, or not searching. However, I have found a tweak that improves the overall stability of the program on my system In my case, the program no longer disappears. *WARNING: Try this at your own risk only!* Open the Windows control panel. Double click on the icon that says "Java Plug-in 1.3.1" and wait for the windows to open. When it pops up, you will see the tab "Advanced" at the top. Go to that tab. If the "Java Runtime Environment" says "Use Java Plug-in Default", change it to "JRE 1.3.1 in C:\Program Files\JavaSoft\JRE\1.3.1" and then uncheck the box that says "Enable Just In TIme Compiler" if it is not already unchecked. Click apply and then close the window. Try launching LimeWire again, and see if that improves its stability. If anyone tries this on their own machine, please reply and let us all know if it worked or not (work being a relative term). Be sure to specify what operating system is and all that fun stuff. Good Luck Everyone! :-)

~TruStarWarrior~

I tried this fix on my machine (Win98 SE, 1 GHz Athlon/Tbird, 512MB Ram) and I still get the disappearing act.

Later

That's a bummer, man. Hoperfully, we'll get a new version to use soon. For now, though, 1.4b should suffice. Not to brag or anything, but my 1.5 version works wonderfully now. It's much faster and responsive than 1.4b, and it gives me better connection reliability. But the system tray icon remains useless and unresponsive. Overall, I'm happy with it, and I'll continue using it. See ya!

~TruStarWarrior~

Just in case anyone was wondering, when we use the term stability in this thread, we are referring to a complete disappearance of LimeWire from your screen, and it involves no error messages or dialogue boxes of any kind. If anybody has found a different or more successful fix, please post it here.

~TruStarWarrior~