"Nothing to choose from" in 4e character creator

[sleepydm]

Disclaimer, not sure if this belongs in 4e section, as I'm new to the program and am not sure what a data file is.

Anyway, I've just received the program and when I tried to create a character, the class section was in red and there was nothing in the drop down menu. All I got was a pop-up box saying that there was nothing to choose from. Why is this, and how can I fix it? Is a DDI subscription required before I can make use of the character creator? For the record, 4e was the first package I've picked when the program offered a freebie.