I played Discovery from about June 2014 to April of 2015 and then went inactive. Since then, my computer has been wiped and then ultimately died.
Now, I would like to play Discovery again, however, I do not have a hard copy of Vanilla Freelancer anymore and need a download link (that actually works) because the link posted in thread "4.88.1" thread on the 'News and Announcements' forum gives me a 7z archive for "media maker 9" and I am, shall we say, a complete moron when it comes to software issues and have no idea what I am doing.
If someone could give me a useful link -OR- a complete rundown of how to use the link in the 4.88.1 thread as if you were talking to a five year old I would be most appreciative.
It seems that you have opened the wrong link, or having some other kind of trouble. The link to the vanilla Freelancer download is in this, and the actual link is this. If you are facing troubles with anything on the website, you can directly use this link that will take you to the download.
After you finished downloading Vanilla, you need to download Discovery, the torrent link over here is the recommended option provided you have uTorrent or Bittorrent (which is safer). Otherwise, you can download it directly through this link
If you have any further problems, feel free to ask. I hope this simple enough.