Here's another option that may or may not make a difference in your case, go to LW's menu bar, Tools>Options>iTunes>Sharing & disable all options & press apply.

As suggested at the beginning of this thread, having a very large no. of incomplete files & shared files can slow LW down somewhat. For a start, it means it takes LW much longer to settle down after opening. And it's always best to leave LW until it's loaded completely & left alone to try to connect by itself to the individual files before user intervention. As you'll notice, all files are queued after opening, LW will attempt to connect to these one by one. Wait until it's finished before adding more files to downld or using the media player, etc. And try to resist from using the Resume/Find Sources function if possible. If to use it, just apply it to 1-3 files at one times. Dial up users should only apply it to one file at a time. Manual searches are better than this function anyway & better for the network by not sending out too many simultaneous requests & jamming it with traffic. So how else to recontinue files downlding, ... direct connecting & browing of search results can certainly help.
Set your uploads & downlds for auto-clear & closing off search tabs if they get into multiple rows & are hours old can also help to reduce strain on LW. Also closing windows you don't need open at that time such as connection window, library & monitor window. Not ticking the option to view incoming searches in the monitor window can also help. Also not using LW's media player.