Josh,
Sorry to hear about all the problems you're having. From your screen shot it looks like you are having problems getting content updates from the master content database. Were the other problems similar?
Here is how LCU's content data stores work: there is a local database that contains all of the content materials (lesson and assignment text, interactive examples, and sample/template stacks). To make sure that the very latest content is available to all users, LCU checks for updated content, stored in a master database online--that's the dev_pwr reference you're seeing--every time it launches. Most of the time these updates are fairly minor, so you can safely ignore content updates and be confident that your content will be okay.
When you are in a lesson or assignment and click on a button to launch a stack, LCU simply extracts a copy of the requested stack from the local database, saves it to your hard drive and opens it in LiveCode. If that is failing there may be some file system permissions problem that is preventing the stack file from being saved, or there may be a Windows registry problem that fails to associate the stack file with LiveCode for opening. See the FAQ (
http://lcu.byu.edu/help/lcu_faq.lc) for more information on this problem. One workaround is, instead of clicking the Open Stack button, right-click on it and Save the stack to your hard drive, then go to LiveCode and manually open the stack from the File > Open menu.
I'll be interested to hear if any of this helps with your problems.
Regards,
Devin