After Effects CS4 OSX - Can't run it, can't install, can't un-install?

Question

MacbookPro, OSX 10.5.8
After Effects crashed while in the quitting process.
I had to "force quit" it
then, I could not open it up again, it would crash as soon as it started.
So I ran "Adobe Updater" on it.  No updates found.
So I got out my instalation disks and re-installed.
That got an error, after going through 3 DVDs worth of something?
So I then tried to uninstall it, and it also errored.
So I manually deleted after effects from my HD, as we did in the
old days before "installers".
It would not delete one particular file in there, claming "in use"
So I restarted, and it took a LONG time with the Grey screen with the
little spinning thing
I almost thought it had corrupted the entire OSX??
But luckily the finder finally returned.
I completed the manual delete, and ran Adobes "setup" on DVD 1 of Creative Suite.
Now it doesn't show After Effects as an option to install anymore?
(Though it does list something about the "example files", as a box which I CANT check)
What's going on here?
Other Adobe CS products still seem to work fine.

Answer 1

wait.
sorry I was out for a couple of days.
before you do anything, could you find the following files (if they exist) and zip them up and attache them to this thread?
/tmp/pbs.log
/Library/Logs/Adobe/Installers/xxx...xxx.log.gz
the latter should be a named and dated log.gz file that indicates the last few days that you may have tried to run the installer you did. please choose the appropriate one.
first off, simply deleting the caps.db etc. will not allow you to update.
IMPORTANT, before you read the rest of this post, since you mentioned that you were installing from the suite, launch one of the apps that still works and choose Help->deactivate... before you do anything else.
now as far as the installers and updaters go, let me try to summarize the issue.
you have only CS4 products present on your machine. (you are lucky here)
after effects won't launch, and fails to update.
you have run cleaner scripts,
photoshop still runs. (this is expected...)
updater relies on (at least) 3 sources of information to discover if you can update your software. if any of them are broken, the updater will fail, and potentially leave you in a position that prevents any future updates.  however, the presence or lack of this data will not affect your ability to run the programs, simply your ability to upgrade or update them, (or indeed, reinstall them.) the cleaner script only really gets rid of one of those places in order to fix the installer, but does not affect/cure the updater problem. to fix the updater you need to clean the system, re-run the original installer to regenerate the other bits of data, then run the updater.
at this point the scorched earth method that chris outlined is pretty much your best bet for eventual peace of mind. however you have to be a little careful as you don't want to add a licensing problem to your issues... (hence telling you to deactivate above, you did, didn't you?)
as of right now, (in this thread) the things that you want to delete to get yourself to a reasonable starting point would be the following:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/caps
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/backup
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Installers
/Applications/.AdobePatchFiles
the last one might be a bit tricky. the easy way to deal with it is to hit cmd+shift+g (Go->Go to folder...) in the finder, and cut and paste that line.  if you are indeed starting your CS4 experience from the beginning again, you can safely delete all the contents of that folder. (side note, for those who want to know, it is copies of files that are eventually necessary for further updates should there be any. (e.g. if you are updating from 9.0.1 to 9.0.2, there are files in here that were generated during the 9.0 ->9.0.1 update that are necessary for the later update to succeed.)) getting rid of those four locations will make your next adobe installer believe that nothing is currently installed or updated.  whether or not you have deleted the actual applications themselves. which, as you have noticed, will still run as if nothing has happened.
do *NOT* delete anything else in the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/ folder.   
now would be a good time to delete the applications themselves from the /Applications directory to be assured of getting a good clean install. (you did deactivate first, right?)
now, rerun the installers with your serial number. from that point you should be okay.  I would recommend running the updater as soon as you are done with the installer, before you do anything else.