Hey, I am just going to really say... Erec, the reason you start out badly is probably because your internet connection... If you EVER notice with most Dial-up servers, when you first start out a download or an upload, it bursts forward with all the speed it can handle, then get worse and worse from there, and by the end, you wish you had never messed with it in the first place.
As for Footpunker, there could be a few things wrong in your download, psclient.cfg... And many other things... Whats your internet connection? When you connect to the server, does it actually get to the loading screen? If so, is it froozen or does it actually CRASH? What operating System are you running in? We need system specs out the darn yin yang for anyone to help you out correctly. Thanks, but once you post that, I will probably see what I can do... But answer these questions first. You may have already said them, but I may have over looked them.
Questions:
What OS (Operating System) are you running on?
Have you tampered you psclient.cfg, planeshift.cfg, sfc.cfg, or anything other configuration file or exe file such as pssetup.exe?
What is your internet connection?
Have you downloaded PS from someone who has tampered the files stated above or any other configuration files?