Trouble upgrading to Photoshop Elements 4.0

Question

Hi there,
I received the upgrade to Elements 4.0 for Christmas (downloaded and saved to CD). My computer refuses to read the lone file on the CD--or rather, it takes at least 5 minutes to read it, and then gives me an error message. My computer is such a mess anyway that I have decided to F-disk it and start all over. I have over 7000 photos in my catalog at PSA SE 3.0, with lots of tags, captions, collections, and notes listed in the properties, all of which I would like to save because it would be next to impossible to do all over again.
Now here's the next flavor of ice cream in my sundae of technologically-induced suffering: I have been experimenting with Picasa2 as well, and I accidentally renamed and reorganized a whole bunch of my photos and folders using Picasa so that they had to be reconnected once I got back into PSA SE. The folders my pictures are stored in are now an ungodly mess and I still have hundreds of pictures to reconnect. I don't want to plug these folders into my upgrade just the way they are--I would much rather reorganize them first. All of these files are backed up, but many of them are backed up under the old names. I could back up all 7000 photos again, but the folders would still be a disorganized mess. Is there any way to rename and reorganize the folders without having to reconnect all of them in PSA SE? Am I going to have to back everything up again regardless? I'm also concerned about losing my captions, tags, notes, etc. when I reorganize or after backing everything up and F-disking. If I save the MyCatalog.PSA file, how will I be able to reconnect its contents with the correct photos later on?
I somehow think this would all be much easier if my upgrade CD would work, but either way I'm planning to F-disk to get rid of the partitions in my computer. Any advice?
Thanks!
Kristie

Answer 1

Sorry, that wasn't very clear. I have had the full, original version of PSE (1.0?) for ages (on CD), but never installed it on my laptop. But since I already had that, my father thought it was logical to purchase the upgrade rather than the full version. He purchased the download and put it on CD for me, and it's this CD that isn't working. Would it help if I installed my original version of PSE and then tried the upgrade? Any chance that would cause more problems? Is it better to wait until after I F-disk?
Thanks for your advice! I'm really not very computer savvy, so I apologize if I just sound like an idiot.
--Kristie