Installing PS Elements 11, please help!

Hi. I'm trying to install Elements 11 onto my laptop (Windows Vista, 4gb ram). It's my first Photoshop product. I'm using an account which is classed as an administrator.

When it installed it said it was unable to install Shared Technologies.

Every time I try to open the program (either from the shortcut or the Start menu) it comes up with a pop-up that says 'A problem caused the program to stop working properly' and it refuses to open at all. I don't even get the start screen or anything.

I've tried loads of stuff in chat with two different helpers, but nothing has worked, and now I can't get back onto chat as it's not chat hours and I would really like some help. (And the chat sessions are sooo slow anyway).

We've tried deleting files, renaming files (including OOBE to oldOOBE). I've tried downloading the Adobe application manager, but it says: Installer failed to initialize. Every time I try to do anything it says I don't have permission, even though I'm an admin. I've tried creating a new admin account and trying to access from there, but all it let me do was change the OOBE file name.

I would like to try uninstalling the whole thing and trying again from scratch in the hope it will install better, but when I try to uninstall from the control panel it says to make sure I've deactivated the serial number to make sure I can reinstall it, but to ensure the serial number is sorted I have to actually open the program which I can't do!

I don't know what to do Help, please?

EDIT: When I go to eventviewer and check for photoshop errors, there are loads, an example says: Faulting application Photoshop Elements 11.0.exe, version 11.0.0.0, time stamp 0x503fc2b0, faulting module unknown, version 0.0.0.0, time stamp 0x00000000, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x00000000, process id 0x5d4, application start time 0x01ceaea3603591a7.