thank you so much for your reply. here goes:
i have tried going to the ffxiv folder and launching ffxiboot.exe directly, it does the same thing. launcher window flashes up and disappears.
i have tried using ffxiv config to change the settings, and that seems to work. i've lowered all settings to the minimum.
the game is installed on both hard drives, from a known good media (i'm trying to install it on a second computer, a laptop to travel with)
this is the first time i've tried to load the game on this computer. i have a desktop that runs it flawlessly.
i can see in task manager and see there is no ffxiv* processes running.
i have tried your suggestion to alt+tab and look for the minimized updater, with no luck.
i have rebooted, it keeps doing the same thing.

the specs on this bad boy are: it's a dell inspiron e1705. 4gb ram, core2 duo at 1.83ghz, radeon x1400 vidya.