HELP! Can't start a new account?Follow

Well, I decided to try out Everquest -- but it's looking like I'll never get a chance to play. It installed fine, and patched fine; but when I open the game, it gets stuck on the EULA agreement page for about 10 minutes. Then when I click on "New Account" it gets stuck for another 10-15 minutes. When it finally opens the form, it's almost impossible to fill out because the cursor takes a good 30 seconds to move after I move the mouse. I can't alt+tab out or even cntrl+alt+delete, so I eventually get disgusted and shut down/restart my comp.

My computer is a year-old top of the line Gateway, and should have NO problems running this game. It runs FFXI without a hitch and that's a much bigger job than this... I thought it might be a problem with Windows XP (I've had similar problems with older games), but XP is on the recommended specs on the box so I doubt if that's it. I have no extra programs running, nothing is taking up bandwidth, EQ should be running fine. But it doesn't. Can anyone help?