EQEmulator Forums - Myriad of Problems

Ok, so I have been gone from the EQ emu scene for about a month now for Winter Break. I got back and checked up on EQ emu, patched EQ, and it was before the patch on Thurs I believe. Now whenever I log into someone else's server my screen either goes black until I ctrl alt delete only to find that it says I couldn't connect and need to repatch eq or I get to the character creation screen make a character and it doesn't go past the loading character screen, I also can't type a name in the name field for my char. When I try to run my own server I get a really strange group of msgs in in world.exe file, and again it says I can't connect to the server and need to repatch. Have I updated EQ to far? or is there some other problem? Pls help if you can. I'm running XP btw.