Game unplayable for 2 weeks due to error 201.

The day before U15 was released, I was able to log in to LotRO and play normally. As soon as the update was released, and I had updated my game client, I started getting error 201, saying that data files were missing or corrupted, after logging in, when I selected a server.

The first thing I tried doing was checking my firewall's logs to see if it was blocking the game (as that has produced some weird errors in the past.) Nothing showed, though I did find that the firewall was set to ask instead of allowing the new version of the launcher through (this is standard for me with all updates.) I fixed that and tried logging in again, then got error 201 at the same place. Running the game elevated as administrator gave the same results. I decided to check permissions on the game files next, and went into Windows Explorer to check via right click on the file and open properties, then checking the security tab. I found about 5 or 6 files (including client_surface.dat) that were locked for my user account, and changed the permissions on them to give me full control. All of them changed permissions properly, except for client_surface.dat. That particular file denied me access, and gave an error message saying it might be corrupted. So, I tried running checkdisk, then went in and checked permissions again for client_surface.dat. It still showed as being corrupted. At this point, I decided to try uninstalling the game and re-installing, thinking the re-install might replace the corrupted file with a good version of it. Note: I used the lotrolive.exe downloader, which does not use Happy Cloud, to do this re-install. Unfortunately, when I brought up the launcher and tried to log in after updating it, I received the same error 201 on the server select screen.

This time, I tried renaming the .dat files (as one user suggested on the forums to somebody else who was getting error 201,) inserting .old at the end of their names to try and force the launcher to re-download them. Once again, the only one I could not re-name and re-download was client_surface.dat. I was beginning to wonder if there was a bad sector on my removable hard drive, or if lotrolive.exe itself was corrupted. I went online and downloaded the lotro_progressive downloader (which does use Happy Cloud) from lotro.com, then tried downloading and installing the game to a different location on my removable hard drive. The game installed just fine in my user account, and I went into my administrator account to check on permissions before trying to launch it. I set all permissions for all subfolders of "The Lord of the Rings Online" to allow full permissions to my user account, and checked on client_surface.dat to see whether or not it was corrupted in this install. It showed up in perfect condition, just like all the other .dat files. I went back into my user account and tried to log in to the game. Once again, when I selected my server, I received error 201 and the launcher closed. When I checked back on the game files, client_surface.dat was showing as corrupted again.

I gave up on troubleshooting at this point and decided to watch the forums, to see if anybody else was getting error 201 and whether they were able to solve it. I did see several posts on it, but their solutions fell within what I had already tried. As of about two days ago, I completely removed the Turbine folder from my removable hard drive, as another game was crashing randomly. Once the Turbine folder had been removed, and I had repaired my registry and run checkdisk again, the other game worked just fine again. As of now, I have not tried to re-install LotRO.

My computer is a low-spec Windows 7 laptop with a 2.3 GHz dual-core processor and 3 GB of RAM. Up until update 15, it ran the game pretty well with little lag on the minimum graphics settings (except in mounted combat in Rohan and sometimes in raid groups, but in raid groups the lag was mostly 1/2 second spikes--normal from what I have heard.)

I am including the output from DXDiag below. The "Machine name" is intentionally blocked out.