EQEmulator won't update?

[Twin]

Friend is trying to reinstall Everquest on his new computer. He is up to the part of updating EQEmulator to access serverlist, etc. EQEmulator asks to update (yes, he ran it as administrator) and begins to update but it eventually just stops and it really doesn't move (45 minutes tested). Any reason why this would happen, anyone know any fixes?
He went ahead and changed the eqhost.txt to eqemulator.net:port 5998, etc. Still nothing before or after.

[Swish]

Something isn't right today, it took me a good few minutes to redownload the spells file (which shouldn't have changed since I last logged in but always downloads again).

I did make it in however, has he tried disabling his antivirus/firewall? They can be suddenly very picky about what's downloaded sometimes.