unfortunately none of those suggestions worked out. Thinking back, i had installed one thing in between the time LW last worked and now. I installed an ethernet driver from the Dell website because I recently reformated my hard drive. This driver allowed me to access the internet using a LAN cable connection at home, instead of my normal wireless connection. Again, Im not sure how relevant that is simply because this error doesn't appear to be "connection" related. I have tried reinstalling limwire for a second and third time and tried updating java again and again to no avail.