ADE crashes and error #2038

I've had ADE 4.5 on my laptop for 6 months. It worked fine until last week. Now it won't let me click on my kobo icon, it just crashes. I uninstalled and reinstalled, but that didn't work. I cycled through 1.7 (which didn't connect to the acms from my library), 2.0, 3.0, and 4.5, but none of them connect. I also sometimes get error #2038. On my husband's Mac it works fine, but I would like to be able to use my own laptop.

On my previous computer I used 3.0 for 4 years, until I had to downgrade to 1.7 to stop it crashing. This time that hasn't worked for me.

AdobeCare on Twitter told me to use the online chat, but they couldn't help me. They told me to look on forums because the "experts" respond 24/7. So far they haven't responded to any of the other discussions I have looked at, so I'm pretty frustrated.

Any tips?