Replying to Limewire

i downloaded limewire because everyone claims its so much better than kazaa lite. but when i try to search on limewire it says "Limewire is currently connecting to the network.Your search my not return many results until you are fully connected to the network." and when i search nothing comes up at all. i tried closing the program and running it again a bunch of times and then disconnecting limewire and connecting again and nothing works.does anyone know how to get it to work?