And when I try to type in "search" I get nothing.

Ah...

You may be running in to one of two common problems:

1. The ActiveState site is temporarily down or unreachable. (This does happen on occassion.) Or
2. You're on a corporate intranet, with a proxy server between you and the outside world.

If the problem is #2, (which seems unlikely in your case since you've managed to get an install to at least partially work) you'll need to set up some environment variables to tell PPM about the proxy server. The ActiveState PPM FAQ the info you need. Open it and search for "proxy".