Lotro character/game problem?

I have a laptop supporting windows vista and i have played the game before and now have two accounts. as of right now, ive tried using my preexisting account to try and play one of my previous characters. the only problem is they switched my elf character to a man (i think based on what i remember and for the fact they dont let the man be a lore master). on top of it my character creation menu will only let me choose a man and the whole entire backround is black so i cant see my selections as well as only being able to choose man classes. and on top of all that when i try to access my previous character it will go to the loading screen and then just show me the new update coming and kinda just freeze right there. the game doesnt exactly freeze but what is really happening is it is pretending to load the zone but the loading bar doesnt move period. is there something i can do to fix this or is my entire game just scrapped? ive played the game on this same laptop and havent changed anything really so in the technical sense nothing should be wrong