Issues, Workarounds & Localization

So I took a couple months off EVE and tried to login again for the first time since February, and have since spent several hours trying to get the thing to work. I've run into a multitude of problems with the launcher that I have been able to solve, but now I can't get the game client to work. When I hit play, the client starts, but in most cases freezes without even getting to the black screen. On one occasion, I managed to get logged into the game, but it took probably 30 min after hitting play to get in. But then, though the GUI overlay worked just fine (except for the fitting screen), all I got behind it was a black screen. I hit the 'Enter Captain's Quarters' button and it replaced the black screen with the captain's quarters loading screen, but never actually loaded anything.

Eventually I decided to kill it and start over, and have since been unable to get to the initial black screen through the launcher. I tried bypassing the launcher, which got me to the client's login screen without issue. That screen informed me that my build version is incompatible and asked me if I want to download a 6MB update. When I tried running the update, it threw this error:

Unable to download file /590158/evepremiumpatch590158.exe from the server.
Error: url //cdn1.eveonline.com/590158/evepremiumpatch590158.exe not found

I haven't tried logging in after bypassing the launcher because my account is through steam, so I can't. I have tried clearing the launcher and client caches and running the repair tool (which completed successfully), with no effect.

I'm running on Windows 8.1.

If there's something I can do other than reinstalling the client and thereby wiping all my client-side data, that would be great.

What is the situation for this error? I have been trying to log on all weekend and I have forum dived and tried every known possibility. I to have been having the exact same issues, the game acts like its going to load up but then does not. Finally I got it to work only to find that I had to play on strange graphics settings with gliched audio. All my other games work fine peforming on max settings. I have not played in many months and I just paid for a month only to find that I can't even play the darn game! I finally re-installed the game to start from square one but now the Eve Loader is nothing but blank image spaces. When I log in nothing happens at all XD. I never had these issues in the past.