major issue here, whenever i run limewire within a few minutes of searching or anythign else for that matter except jsut letting it idle it will lock up my system and then crash and reboot my pc. Now i am running a high end video card and have current drivers so i know that it is not graphics problem or video prolbem. i have no virus's or the such on my computer, windows xp with all the updates, everything is good on my end of the computer it is just that it will do tht, often with the mouse being locked from left to right motion of up and down motion. sometiems there will be a small one inch by one inch square tht is black or grey and then it locks up and that is that.. what exactly is the issue with lime wire on my computer for this problem.

Can you give us a total description of your set up:
1. OS version? (eg: Windows 98)
2. What firewalls you have?
3. How much ram?
4. Hard Disk space available?
5. Connection type? (eg: dialup, broadband, cable, etc.)
6. Modem & router brand name & model numbers?
7. Where are you trying to connect from (home, school, work, etc.)?
8. What version of Limewire (LW) & Java do you have? (Go to LW's menu Help>About LW...) Will show both LW & Java version.
9. Who is your isp provider (Internet Service Provider)?
10. Are you sharing the connection with other computers or p2p sharing programs? If yes, please give details of set up.
11. Is this a your 1st try at LW or is this a new problem with an experienced user.
12. Have you seen these? (a) The way to fix the Blank screen on startup, & also (b) GeoForce 3D setting, & also (c) click LW icon & it begins to initialize but then stops and nothing happens Graphic card setting!

Description is as follows :

1. OS is - Windows XP
2. No firewalls
3. 1GB of RAM
4. 120 GB of free hard drive space
5. connection speed 5MG Broadband
6. netopia not sure of teh rest. got it through century tell
7. home
8. newest version 4.12.3
9. ISP is Century tel
10. not sharing with any other comnputers
11. new problem with experienced user
12. yes looked at them dont solve it

What video card brand & model & set-up do you have? What firmware versions?

Try these things:

1. Try deleting your LW Preferences folder whilst LW is closed; instructions here: Point #2 & 3 in Fixes for Limewire (sample image included at bottom of page.)

2. Make sure you have Java 1.5. Also try changing LW compatibility to either Windows 2000 or NT as in step 5 here Fixes for Limewire

3. Tip: Purge the Downloads Queue! & apply on files 0% downld status & 0-50 KB in size.

4. Go to LW's menu bar, Tools>Options>Speed & tick disable ultrapeer capability & press apply.

java is at 1.5 and tried the other things. still nothing... i have an ATI radeon 9800 PRo

Not sure then. You could check these links which apply to your model graphic card: 1. Radeon 9800 Issue 1, & 2. Radeon 9800 Issue 2

Other than that, all I can think of is swapping java versions around. 1.5 to 1.4.2
There's also the Java 1.6 beta which has had good reports, but you'd need to uninstall all other versions of Java before you could use it with LW: http://java.sun.com/javase/6/download.jsp JRE "Offline" version which is a 15.72 MB download.
LW will not use Java 1.6 beta unless it's the only version running!

I presume you played around with the graphic card settings.

You know I'm not terribly computer savvy, but I do notice I'm having the exact same problems as the thread creator, and am also running The 9800 pro. I followed your steps, and have not yet found a solution. Could there be a compatability issue with the video card?