I'm having an issue starting Pidgin up...

I dbl-click the icon on my desktop, it opens the pidgin buddy list window, slows down my computer quite a bit...
and then freezes... it says it's connecting, but times out, then pidgin pops up with an error..saying it must close...session is timed out...
I downloaded pidgin from this website, first 2.2.1 worked for me, until it id the time out thing the second time I downloaded it...then 2.2.2...just keeps doing the time-out thing.. I've tried uninstalling it and reinstalling it...though that seems not to work at all.... Help?

Aethe~