Quite honestly, I'm quite surprised your LW is still working if there are hundreds of old files waiting. SO much in the code has changed, with more to come. Frankly, I'd just create a new OS X user account and install LimeWire there, and start fresh, or at least trash the old incomplete folder, and a brand new one will be created. The two files that store all the info about incompletes are the downloads.dat and downloads.bak files. I'm guessing they are a mess! The annoyance at losing all that research will probaly be repaid by a fresh start. YMMV.

Anyway, the old incompletes are probably useless by now, since those files are probably either gone from the network or are being hosted by a different IP. There aren't many hosts who keep the same static IP--most ISP's give out dynamic IP's, and many change nightly. I suspect LW is already ignoring those files.

The code behind the "Awaiting/Need/Resume" messages is often tweaked and improved, so it's difficult to know exactly what it means from version to version. Heh--the FAQ can't even keep up! The good part is that the versions keep improving, as the overall net growth shows.

As for the searches, a good busy host won't return results (those serrvents that return results for files, even though all the slots are filled, used to be far more annoying.

For the files that always show, check the file size. Some spammers have figured out how to show the name you type, but the file is spam. Control-click the file and choose a bitzi search to get more info.

As for the anti-leeching, it was deactivated for a while, and I don't think it works the same way it once did (if at all). Just ignore it, and let the network take care of it. I think sharers tend to attract better connections, so anti-leeching is in effect handled elsewhere.