The fix

Here's how I got PE3, my editing software, to run. From the beginning, the "advice" I was getting was that the new memory card was faulty. I refused to believe this since everything else ran fine, especially Finale 2008, which wouldn't run at all with the older, lower memory. But it made no sense to me that reinstallation didn't fix the problem. Well, this IS the answer but you have to do it right.

I was uninstalling using the Remove Software function in Windows Control Panel. Instead, following the advice on the net, I uninstalled from the installation disk itself. Moreover, and this appears to be the critical step, after removal I went into the Program Files folder, into the Adobe folder, and manually removed all folders associated with Premiere Elements. Uninstalling does not remove them. This done, I reinstalled -- and everything works!

As a matter of course, I save copies of everything on an external hard drive, so all I had to do is import my projects and I'm off and running. All I really lost was my Favorites folder, which is easily enough reconstructed.

A happy ending to a long day -- knock on my wooden head (in case the gods have other surprises to deliver).

P.S. This has been a trying year re technologyland, with two complete crashes and now this. Enough, already.