PlanetSide patcher woes

[Eater1]

I am currently playing, or rather trying to play, the trial version (in case you don't know, FilePlanet is offering a 7-day PlanetSide trial for those willing to d/l 1.4 GB worth of PlanetSide) of PlanetSide. Since I'm on the trial version, the official tech support forum won't let me post. I really want to play PlanetSide, but it wouldn't make sense to buy the game if I can't get it to run, so could some of the no doubt very knowledgable people on this board either help me out on this request, or perhaps make a post on my behalf on the official PlanetSide tech board, where it can (probably after a few months) be answered by an official tech support guy?
Anyway, my problem is this:

When I try to run PlanetSide, the launcher begins to download the latest update, but when it gets halfway through startup.pak, it freezes. It always freezes in the same place. I've tried all kinds of networks settings - I'm on a router, but I tried plugging my computer directly into the cable modem, enabling and disabling firewalls, and defragging my drive (this was suggested as a solution to someone else's similar problem on the official tech board). I am able to run (well, run may be an overstatement) PlanetSide on another computer also hooked up to my router, and it patches fine - the only problem is that the computer is a few centuries old and runs PS at about -1 FPS. I've tried copying the patched files from this computer to my normal one, but it still tried download startup.pak again. Finally, I resorted to modifying the PatchCache.xml file and changing the CRC (or whatever) value after "startup.pak" to the value the log indicated for that file. The patcher was fooled into thinking I was updated, and I could actually click play. The problem was that PS immediately crashed with the generic Win XP "program was shut down" error (a variant of the "illegal operation" error from earlier versions of Windows).
Now, my request is this: does anyone know if startup.pak is actually different for every computer? When I run a "complete scan" (or whatever it's called), even with the "fooled" values, it again tries to download startup.pak, indicating that the one I copied from my old computer was somehow not good enough. Because if not, there seems to be no reason why fooling the patcher and copying over the startup.pak from my old system would cause the crash. And, more obviously, does anyone know how I can fix the patcher, so I can let it download the file and determine for sure what's wrong?

Thanks in advance,
Eater.

[Strygun]

this is a huge guess, but go into your PS folder (C:\Program Files\Sony\Planetside) and delete the file named Startup.pak. This will force a fresh, most recent download of that file. If that doesn't work, then um..

punch your computer?

[Eater1]

Yeah, I've already tried that, nothing. Same thing as always - starts downloading, gets halfway, and stops. Oh how I wish they provided other download locations or at least an explanation on how to manual patch PS.

Eater.