Army Builder installation becoming corrupted

[MarkC]

Hi

I've been using Army Builder for a number of years with no problems. However, late last week I had a problem where the installation appear to be corrupted. Army Builder would start, but the buttons wouldn't appear properly. There would be an outline where they should be, but you can't click on them. There is also a tiny icon in the upper left corner that appears to be the text label for the button shrunk down. This small icon is about 1/4 the width of the outline and 2/3 of the height of the outline. You can tab to the buttons though.

Additionally, once in the program many (but not all) of the icons don't appear correctly. Also AB can get into a situation where it locks up using 100% of CPU (eg with WFB data files, add a unit that can have a runic standard. When you select the placeholder (missing icon) for the Runic standard, AB locks up).

I uninstalled and reinstalled AB on Friday night and it was all okay (apart from having to re-register the license) on Friday. I started AB this morning, and I have the same problem again.

Question 1: If I uninstall and reinstall again, does the licensing system count this as a separate license/move to a different PC, or does it recognise it is still the same machine?

Further background: The machine is a XP laptop. It is nearly 3 years old and probably due to a reformat.

I often encounter the problem that if I install product A, then run product B, that product C will want to reinstall itself. Typically two of the products in the mix are ones developed in-house by my employer, but often the product that wants to reinstall is MS Office and VMware products. I have never had Army Builder be part of this mix.

I was having this problem last week and the Event Viewer was reporting problems with MsiInstaller missing MSXML*.* file in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\SFPA Cache. I copied the files in one at a time to try and address this. The files added so far are msxml3.dll, msxml3r.dll, msxmlx.cat. It is currently complaining that it does not have msxmlx.inf, but this is not elsewhere on the machine so I haven't copied it in.

The Event Viewer has MsiInstaller errors and warnings about no valid source found for VMware workstation and The resource 'C:\program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\SFPA Cache\msxml.inf" does not exist.

Speculation: Army Builder relies on the MS XML. Adding/removing other products on the computer has resulted in MS XML installation becoming damaged.

Regards

Mark C