I had this problem yesterday, no matter how many times I connected and reconnected the search was always greyed out. In the end I did a full uninstall and reinstalled with a newer version of K Lite.
Yep, it's pretty much identical except it doesn't contain any Spyware just search Google for Kazaa lite. For various reasons I am unsure as to whether direct links are allowed here.
K-Lite is nice, very nice, the auto search more and download keep alive functions alone are reason to switch, then there's the fact it blocks RIAA IP's and such.