Kobo desktop app failure

[smiley10_05]

Hi everybody,
So recently I took over my mom's Kobo Touch. I reset it and went to plug it into the Kobo Desktop and then went to go set it up, but the popup won't go away and will not allow me to properly set up my device.
On the ereader itself I've linked it with my account but the 'set up your ereader' won't allow me to sync my library to my ereader. i've reset my kobo and uninstalled/reinstalled my kobo desktop but nothing is working. i even gave it a few days to see if that made a difference but this is just getting frustrating!
This is the set up process i keep having to relive (it's an endless cycle):

it starts off here...

then it prompts me to log in

but it freezes for few seconds

and takes me back here!