Day from hell

One of the programs I use- the main one, After Effects, refuses to start this morning. Everything else is working fine. So after much futzing with prefs, I uninstall it, nuke any reference to it from the registry, and reinstall.

It still doesnt run. Just hangs.

Cutting a long, frustrating, unproductive story short: I've formatted the system drive and reinstalled Windows. I'm about to install After Effects. Wish me luck!!


Things I tried today:

X Delete AE preferences
X Disable openGL
X Update display drivers
X Uninstall AE
X Reinstall AE
X run AE in safe mode
X attempt uninstall AE in safe mode
X Pound head on desk
X Reinstall XP SP2
X Uninstall ALL Adobe products
X remove all registry keys that reference Adobe products
X Regcleaner to nuke the rest
X reinstall AE
X pound head on desk
X Boot from XP disk
X Run XP repair from XP disk
X Eat cake and cry. While pounding head on desk.
X Boot from XP disk. Format C:
X Giggle maniacally.
X reinstall XP.
X reinstall AE (which now works!)
X realise I forgot to back up 4 years of email.
X pound head on desk.