At fist I did out of habit, and it did not work. Although I guess I should point out that the grey screen hung for a while the first time I tried. It is only every time after that I have gotten the result described in my original post.
My buddy says his client is running like a top, and all he did was open the foline.exe after unzipping. It is my understanding that those files, or the equivalent, are provided in the full client download.
But I tried again anyway, same result.
Thanks for the quick response anyway stalker. Good to see the same folks are still around.