SureAI

And it's refreshing to be labeled a greenhorn at 69 years of age. Built my first computing devices over 40 years ago, been playing ever since...

And now that it has loaded it demands an update before it will open, but when I hit 'Update' it claims there is no internet connection or server present. Went through all the options but can't find anything relating to connectivity.

Our servers are online.
If you encounter connection issues vivit this wiki page

I've done every single thing it says to do in the troubleshoot, yet I still have the same issue- No network connection.

It's been incredibly frustrating and I can't find a fix for it. I even had to make an account here for the sole purpose of posting this.

Just corrected the link above (that was a link before we changed a lot on the servers). Are you sure that you've done everything what is requested? Have you tried restarting your PC the launcher? Whitelisted the launcher on your firewall / anti-virus program / windows defender? Tried the cmd solution?
The issue is definitely on your side, our servers are online.

I've done all of those things, and even re installed the whole thing multiple times.do I need to restart my computer and use the cmd command after every reinstall?

uh, absolute and complete shot in the dark,
but if you tried everything in the troubleshoot section
there might be a general issue with your internet connection
soooo
you could try this:
- open the windows console as admin (search for "cmd" - rightclick - run as admin)
- type the following lines (one after the other, with "enter-key" in between!)

[+] ...

ipconfig /release
ipconfig /all
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /renew
netsh int ip set dns
netsh winsock reset

it will definitely not do any harm,
and it probably won't help either, but it's worth a shot.

It didn't work, but "ipconfig /renew" didn't acutally do anything, I can't remember what it said but it was something about a VPN being connected... whatever that means
thanks anyway

I'm actually going insane now, I've been trying for about 2 days, I'm starting to think this isn't worth it...

silly question, but can you try installing and updating on a different device
(some friend's Laptop for example), on your internet connection?
just for testing purposes, to ensure there isn't an issue with that.

maybe download the installation package (best via torrent) and launcher again.
could be that there's something wrong with it

edit:
are you trying via wlan or lan?
maybe try the other.
(I have no idea )