Ok, in another thread, i was told to convert the iw5m.dat to an exe, inorder to circumvent the clr20r3 error i did this but it circumvented the updater and though now I'm a step ahead of where i was, i now cannot update the cache.xml to play anywhere... so my question to the community here is: is there a way to launch the updater other than the launchiw5m.exe?

I don't think there is a way. You could get the files from a friend and try manually updating the game though.

interesting idea, i'll check around, although at the moment i don't know anyone from the 4d1 community... any other takers? perhaps a console command?