Actually I have 5.3 and 5.5 and both work great i dont even have a shortcut to anything but eqgame.exe and in its target as soon as I make a shortcut to it it gets "patchme" tagged right on it so I know it will NOT get patched.
I used 5.3 that day and everyday for the past week. Trust me it words
And a lot of that 1017 is based from account problems mostly anyways.