Thanks Scott, but that is what I am doing - when I tried to create a new player I was informed that my email address was already in use, so I used the 'forgot my password' link to reset it and my account here shows that I joined in March 2010, which I certainly don't remember.
The text on screen suggests that the game is trying to connect to a web page but I don't see any new tab created in a browser. From what I've seen in the tutorial I'm not sure that it is worth my while wasting too much time on getting this fixed, I've always preferred 'mouse swing' to clicking going all the way back to Links' Powerstroke, but thank you for the suggestion.