It's strange seeing so many people having problems with the patcher, since I got it up & running on the first attempt (don't you just hate me now?
not to worry though, I've had my own crosses to bear in getting this working). I'm running Windows XP with Service Pack 1 & all the latest updates. I even have a firewall installed on my computer (ZoneAlarm), but I've set it to allow certain programs to have access to the Internet (like the patcher). I'm on a dial-up connection that's as slow as molasses but at least it works.
Some people have reported that many broadband providers place their users behind a proxy, so if you're on a broadband pipe, call your ISP to check if this is the case (not all ISPs advertise this fact). If so, see if you can access a dial-up modem connection via someone else's machine (copy your EQ files to a CD), or (if you have a modem installed) your own.