Premiere Elements 11, Windows 8, Was Working Fine, Now 'Has Stopped Working'

Question

I have just finished a project successfully, burned a BluRay with acceptable result, then shut down for the night. While viewing the BluRay, I saw a couple of glitches I wanted to fix, and the menu did not appear, so re-opened the project this morning. Thinking a stop marker would fix the menu not re-appearing, I inserted one at where I thought the end of my video was. I then found an unnecessary clip at the end that had slipped by me, making the end of the video longer, and likely the problem with the main menu not coming back. I deleted the clip. I rendered, saved, and played, but the playback wouldn't start. I closed and restarted about 5 times, same result. Now, Premiere Elements does not start at all, I get the splash screen, then the Windows box saying the program has stopped working and Windows will be in touch with me when they find a solution. Any ideas? I de-selected a sound device in Control Panel while the program was running, but have undone that action and the program will not start. I appreciate the help.

Answer 1

ATR, thanks for the quick response. I tried some of your suggestions (from another related issue) in troubleshooting this one.
Good info on the stop marker, I will remove it.
Long story short, I have managed to re-install the program and get it to start. After the third time, the combination seems to be to Remove my preferences, Remove downloaded content, and Deactivate Product. I was reluctant to do the deactivation checkbox, I downloaded the program and was concerned about being locked out, Adobe thinking this was another illegal install.
I started the program gently (giving things a long time to load, light on the hard drive being the main indicator) and was able to reload the video that seemed to cause the problem. Rendered, played, edited, no problems at this point.
As to what may have caused the trouble initially, I'm not sure. I have speakers run off the analog onboard sound, with a microphone connected. I also have a USB headset w/ microphone that I use for narration and latenight listening. These devices don't seem to know about each other, and changing their status in Control Panel does not translate to a current Elements session. In Elements preferences, I enabled the analog speakers. From there, things went downhill. The sound wouldn't play, then the play would not start the video in editor, then the program would not start at all.
I really like this program so far. I used Elements 1 and 2 way back when (with a computer to end all computers) to get all of our VHS recordings onto digital media. I did some editing and made some videos, then got away from it for a few years. We started diving and I got a GoPro camera. It didn't take too long to figure out the computer I had wouldn't do it for the new video formats. So, I now have the computer to end all computers to take care of the task. This has been the first glitch I've had in Elements 11. I expected a great deal more trouble with Windows 8.
Anyway, thanks again. If I find a recurring issue here, I will be sure to post it.