Listen BTCIRV, I had the same issues but was able to fix it easily.

Are you running on *nix or Windoze?

If you are running 'doze, open a CMD terminal window and navigate over to the directory that your Protoshares QT is located.

Type:


And hit enter.  The QT should open automatically and connect.

If you still have issues, please feel free to private message me and I'll see what I can do (though I mostly lurk on this site).