Hey...
Do not give up...!
Have you added -diag as a command line option?
If you do, you should get a file called acklog.txt that will be created in your construction folder.
That will help you diagnos this situation.
I always run my games with this running.
If you get -diag working, you can then send a note to "Support" and send them the acklog.txt file.

Actualy I think that if you have 9.0c installed correctly you should create a newly downloaded 3dgs folder.
Maybe you got a corrupted download. When you are downloading don't do anything else....
Just let the download finish. Then try again...
Best of luck...