The problem you're having is probably that Impulse wants to patch to 1.1 now, whereas you installed 1.09 from the archive. The patch is pretty big (like, really big).

I don't think 47MB is really big...unless you've got a really slow Internet connection I guess.

The update bug can be bypassed, so it's really just an inconvenience and I think I'd rather have SD keep working on the game than devoting any time to fixing this.

Solved !!!!!!!!!!

Reinstalling weirdness!!! I tried running Impulse, then 'reinstall archive', it says it works, but nothing seems to happen. So I pointed it at another elemental.Impulse backup that I had, and then it said it wasn't a proper archive and nothing happened... that ok. Then I did it again, clicked 'reinstall archive', pointed it to the correct archive, and this time it worked !?! So now the game is in my start menu and ready to play I think!! No No No, because there are no files there, weird !! So, I still had to extract the archive to C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock Games\Elemental\....
You also need to add the 4 .xml files from your impulse directory...
Now run the game, and it works!!

What a nightmare