Hi BK,
I've got a 512K cable modem and the patch took less than 10 seconds to D/L as I recall. My brother is a technical trainer for Microsoft and is subsequently highly clued up with this sort of stuff. He said you will never be able to join our game until your game is patched as the games are effectively different versions of the same thing and won't recognise each other. Try to D/L the patch again with nothing running in the background. It sounds as though you may have a slow connection or maybe you just tried to D/L at a bad time. Try to find out what kind of net connection you have and I'll ask if there's any way to enhance it.
This is the exact URL of the patch that I am using. -
http://www.3ddownloads.com/?file_id=139818
I used the top link, the middle was not working originally. Hope it works ok.....keep us posted.
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One love, peace.