
I know that I should probably have the install cd with me, but it's at the computer's previous owner's house, slightly putting a damper on that solution at the moment. (I'm picking it up in the morning.)
However, I did contact the ms chatline support to see if what they had to say, and they had me run through the same procedure, and eventually had me go in the command screen from Start/Run menu and type in a few commands. Seems as though my installer may have become unregistered somehow. I suppose we re-registered it that way. The commands were:
Log on to your computer as an administrator.
1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type cmd, and then click OK.
3. At the command prompt, type msiexec.exe/unregister, and then press ENTER.
4. Type msiexec /regserver, and then press ENTER.
Now its all Chinese to me but perhaps it will help someone else in the future
Thanks amuch Jonny! Where's Nance?!