Alright. I'm not at home now, so I can't give specifics. Some other sucker'll have to do that.
Did you delete your cache folders?
If you didn't, or don't want to (deleting them outright will reset your settings ingame), copy them over to another directory and delete everything in the original cache folders.
It sounds like the updater for EVE isn't starting. I think it's an application file. You could try finding it and manually activating it. I suppose your security settings might be getting in its way, but generally speaking there'd be a prompt in a popup window if this was the case.
If I were you, I'd start downloading the client to a specified location on your machine. In its entirety. From the website, manually. Just leave it to download overnight if your connection's kind of slow, it'll get done. When it's done downloading, save your chatlogs and portraits folders and so forth (along with cache maybe) but uninstall EVE from your machine, then do a reinstall from the newly downloaded client installer.
If all that doesn't work, then you might have to resort to calling your ex.
Tell us about the scanner.