Hi, I am a new player trying to set the game up. I followed all the instructions perfectly. Got into character creation, chose a nation, and when the game tried to load the server I just got error "FFXI- 3001" over and over. I tried restarting and now Ashita just keeps downloading Ashita.exe over and over again until it fails and says "Failed to update Ashita.exe. Could not kill all running Ashita.exe processes!"
I tried updating PlayOnline again and repaired to see if that fixed it, but it isn't working as there is no problem there. I am stuck at an impass here. Any help would be appreciated.

Do a quick search on it. There are a bunch of ideas out there but basically it's a communication error. Sometimes you just need to wait a bit for the servers to figure out you're not actually logged on and let you back in.

Try making a character with a different name. I had a similar issue at one point in time and it was because the game let me make a character with a name that was already taken but would not load the character in because of this. I can't say for sure that your issue is the same but its worth a try.