McAfee Firewall
You can setup McAfee Firewall to permit Bearshare traffic in two ways : automatic and manual .

Automatic Configuration
When you run BearShare for the first time with McAfee Personal Firewall on your computer, you will be prompted with a popup alert as shown to the right.*

Simply choose the Grant Access option, and BearShare will be allowed through the firewall for incoming and outgoing connections.
*This alert may also appear for other reasons even if it is not the first time running both applications together. The above procedure applies just the same.

Manual Configuration
1. To begin, double-click the McAfee Personal Firewall icon in the system tray, found in the right-hand corner of your Windows taskbar.

2. Select the Internet Applications page.

3. Highlight BearShare as shown below by clicking on it just once. In the Change Permission To area click on Allow Full Access. Next, open the File menu and click on Settings to open another dialog window, shown in Step 4...

4. After opening the File menu and clicking Settings in the previous step, check the resulting dialog to ensure the Security Level slider is NOT set to Lockdown.
Click OK to finish.

McAfee Personal Firewall will now allow BearShare full internet access for outgoing and incoming connections.

Test your settings
In BearShare, go to the Hosts view, right-click on the screen, and choose Redetect Firewall Status from the menu that appears.If you do not see the Hosts view, make it visible by going to View > Enable Views, and click Hosts in the list.

Give BearShare a minute or so to check, then look at the 4th LED (on the right). If it is green, then you are good to go. If it is yellow, you are still firewalled. Double-check your settings and try again.