Sorry for the double post first of all.
I've tried every troubleshooting method listed in these forums. Wiz had said something about the FTP backbone :? could be down and to get with someone via IRC or whatever to get it fixed.... no idea what that means, but seeing as how i cant come up with a solution, perhaps that could be my problem? Neither the new patcher nor the old will work. i've done everything from re-installing the hotfix to deleting and reinstalling the patcher as a last resort, all to no avail.
The error on old patcher is: bad user name/password
The error on new patcher is: Application has generated an exception that could not be handled
Process id=0x2c8 )712), Thread id=0x570 (1392)
then i get an option to terminate application or debug it..... all those numbers go to the error i got with new patcher