Go find yourself Azureus (I know its a stinky Java client before you say, but I've found it the best one despite that, its what I use ) & thats got little handy colour indicators for status & also a little test programme in it that'll let you see if its all going right - also reaching your tcp connect limit can cause this issue - what o/s ? if its w2k/xp have a look in your event viewer for symptoms of this.