I am SO glad that I am not the only one having trouble with searches. I have gotten the "less than zero" error page, but since when I contact AS support about issues like this, AS support blames my system/environment, it seemed hopeless for me.
Search is not working like it used to even when it works at all. My searches are limited to 50 items - the first fifty that AS comes across. The same search in ebay gives me several hundred. Since I'd prefer to have the AS searches since I can snipe from there, I may not be making as many snipes (hint, hint).