Note: I just installed 2.2.1 today and have the same issue of connecting okay, searching okay, but no text in window (I can right click on something that allows me to select from a list but since the hot buttons are grayed out both above and below in the download window, I believe nothing would actually download.
Note: I received an alert today to install the new version of LW and did. I suspect this problem is alot bigger than you guys think it is. Used "Clean" Lime, per your suggestion (which was not user friendly to intall) but that did not fix the problem. I suspect if you do not fix this issue soon you will have a major drop in usage. OS: W98 second edition with 5.5 IE, latest updates, Java 1.3