Hello katesmith,
what OS and which version of KVIrc do you use?
Your problem sounds like a network/firewall issue, change anything?
If you should restore the default script, config could be broken, try a clean config, move your config when KVIrc is not running and start KVIrc normally. On linux KVirc3 configs are in ~/.kvirc and KVircc4 config in ~/config/KVIrc
Are all servers effected or only freenode? If only Freenode, try some other from
http://freenode.net/irc_servers.shtml and/or to connect to Freenode port 7000 and SSL.
Hope something will help,
ambossarm