Photoshop Elements program corrupted, can't reinstall without further corruption

While opening a file within Photoshop Elements 12, the program crashed and something became corrupted.  All the drop-down menus are reduced to blank white-space dropdowns (making them pretty much useless since I don't have them memorized).  After trying to figure it out, I decided to uninstall and reinstall from disc (DVD).  However, after installation, the same problem persists.  I've searched my drive to try to find all the leftover files associated with PS Elements (after another uninstall) to see if by deleting them the problem would be solved but with no success.  I've tried this several times now with the same result.  Since trying to figure out how to contact Adobe directly for help is next to impossible, I thought I would give this avenue a shot.  If anyone has any ideas or recommendations, I'd greatly appreciate it.  This shouldn't be so difficult.