After being continually reminded to upgrade to the new version I did. But now instead of a download speed of 100-400kbp/s I'm lucky if it reaches 10. Why did this happen and what do I have to do to get the speed back up. I have Limewire basic. Anyone know what to do?

Re-search the files individually as you did originally to find them. This will hopefully find more sources to download from for each of your downloads. This is a good principle to use in any case, it has always helped with previous versions of LW.