I decided to close down limewire and see if it connected straight away. Guess what?
It didn't!
So i looked in toolsptions; firewall config, and i noticed that the listen on port number had changed, so i clicked to restore defaults, closed limewire, reopened to no avail.
Once again i checked out the listen on port and didn't recognise the number. So i clicked on restore defaults and the instant the tools window closed i connected! Curious, i looked to see the listen on port n° and it showed 6346... the same n° shown in grey for the manual port forward option. I have no idea whats going on but i seem to keep stumbling into solutions.
Perhaps this will make sense to someone.
Will try to close and reopen later to see what happens.