[taco-man]

i figured out how to do waht i was stuck on, its so simple, i just can't work very well when i'm real tired (and believe me i was REALLY tired, yesterday after i got home from school i worked on the updater thing for about 10 hours)

        Try
            Ds.ReadXml("http://maps.eq2interface.com/POI_files/file_list.xml")
        Catch ex As Exception
            'show message box with error connecting, and the error on the next line
            MessageBox.Show("Error Connecting to EQ2MAP Update Server:" & vbCrLf & ex.Message)
            'then exit sub because the dataset is empty so i cant do anything to it
            Exit Sub
        End Try

For anyone who is interested here is about what the updater is going to look like: