It solved it instantly. Premiere opened with nary a whimper. My problem was I started with too many right clicks. If I had just left clicked C, Program Data was right there plain as day. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees, or the other way around.
By the time I went to the forum for help, I was so sure that the problem was hard to solve, it clouded my judgement.
The silver lining is that it made me back up my photo files to a separate hard drive, which I had been putting off, and I deleted a lot of useless crap and startup items.
I don't know why this happened originally. I think it started when I downloaded 1300 timelapse photos to Picasa, but who knows.
You would think a computer could figure out that a major problem could be fixed by deletion of a bad file, especially when it's named BADFILE!. That is why I have never put much faith in Windows diagnostic and repair programs.
I can tell you that my wife is also relieved, as i haven't been a happy camper lately.
