What a victory: failed installs due to "shared technology" errors returns endless threads via Google

Question

I purchased PSE 10 (download) and lit up an install. It failed. I searched Google and oddly, the moment I hit the terms "photoshop elements 10 install fail" I got 40-50 results for "shared technology" failures. You guys are failure stars!
By the way, I cannot thank you enough for wasting my day like this. Back in the old days one had to visit microsoft.com to waste an entire ******** day trying to get their poorly engineered product installed, after it's failed endlessly to do as expected. Bill would be proud, if he weren't busy out there earning billions of dollars by giving away millions...which is nicer than what I have to say about you right now. Who needs time with their kids? Install PSE!!! It's a great time soak!
So, with that, I beg of you to please start sending me the usual asinine, nonworking fixes-in-a-box to get this product installed on my machine, even though we both know it won't work. Meanwhile, I have purchased downloaded, installed, and started using the Corel's latest version of PSP, which nearly FLEW into my hard drive and immediately worked right out of the box. Boy, they suck, huh? No. They don't. You do.
I've followed the hilariously funny and equally useless advice on your help forums (my favorite: " If you are using a downloaded installer, or running the installation from the hard drive, the Shared Technologies can fail because of the installation path. Copy the installation files to a folder to the root of the drive." Really? So you're saying "to install this stupid product, first you must fix our stupid mistake." Love you. Truly, I do.) and nothing has worked. I assume you will end up pointing at Microsoft and calling them bad, since every other app on my computer works without this moronic, yet remarkably popular, failure.
And even if we get this (endlessly) failed implementation to work - emphasis on IF - I will probably de-install it and demand a refund, depending on whether PSP has their product up to par, which is far more likely than Adobe having a working fix.
Now, I will say for the record that I have been harsh, and snide, and nasty. I am tired, and frustrated, and it's been four hours, and I have had enough. Having said that, deal with it. I am your customer (for the moment). Why do I need to ask you to make your product work? Isn't that the point? Is it? Helloooo?

Answer 1

It has occurred to me that Adobe's support people may be cowards. Then again, I am being a jerk, and it's probable they may have read my comments and said "screw this guy." I might say that. Then again, if I worked for a world-class company like Adobe I might step up and defend my product.
Then again, I might not, because they fell off the tracks some time ago and failed to stay in sync with the technologies they need to work with (read: Microsoft) to the degree they have Google reflecting:
a.) Adobe's level of failure in compatibility given the immediate and numerous responses to the simple keywords "elements fail" returning an astonishing number of responses (mine at the top lately) and...
b.) Adobe's own technical staff offering roughly a dozen differing, non-working fixes to the issue and...
c.) Adobe's studied and intentional avoidance of my emails, this thread, and hilariously worthless chat support.
It is very likely the source of the issue is an administrator profile glitch on the MS side, or perhaps an MSI issue, but good luck getting that clarified from Adobe.
They!
Don't!!
Know!!!
And they don't care. All I can say about that is I am glad I only dropped sixty-odd bucks on this product rather than seven-odd hundred for CS6. Maybe I'd get support if I had, but these snotty threads would be YouTubed, Reddited, and published in the local paper.
Next: there has been a breakthrough! An amazing breakthrough!
Among the many useless and stupid bits of advice Adobe's staff throw around on the support site, there is a great recommendation to try to load the product in safe mode. Last night I booted into safe mode and tried to run the installer, which of course immediately popped a dialog box stating it couldn't run in safe mode, so there's Adobe's great advice for you. While I was laughing and taking screen shots for posterity I glanced at my desktop, and there it was: the Photoshop Elements 10 icon. What are you doing there? I double clicked, and viola! It was loaded all along! Opened right up with that blue screen with a thousand names of the dev team.
Wait. What? I thought it rolled back? It SAID it rolled back the install. No? That 5 minutes it spends “rolling back” it just pretends to roll back, deletes the icon, leaving my computer polluted with a product I already got a refund on from Amazon? Really?
Anyway I rebooted back into my normal state and lo and behold, the PSE 10 icon is still there on my desktop. It did not install from safe mode. It had been installed from the beginning, and for whatever reason booting into safe mode and rebooting back seems to fix whatever idiotic and mindless failure Adobe built into this thing which they couldn't otherwise help me fix. Plain reboots did not do this: only booting into and back out of safe mode.
Thinking I was imagining things, I got up this morning and checked. Yep. There it is on my desktop, working as if it had been there all along and I hadn't been ignored, avoided, led astray, given stupid advice, or sold a product that clearly wasn't ready for sale. PSE 10. Working. Seemingly fully functional. Glory be.
Now, since I am the one who fixed it, I was thinking Adobe should pay me. I spent about 10 hours fuming over this thing, and I bill $65 an hour as a consultant. I realize that I am not an Adobe coder or support specialist, but I fixed it and should be compensated for my time at my rate. A bonus is in order as well - call it pain and suffering. 10X$65 plus a little sweetener, let's call it a thousand bucks. What do you say, Adobe? Are you going to award my ingeniousness and brilliance? You couldn't handle it, and still can't, but I did it. Me. The bitchy, whiny one infesting your support board with angry hate. You owe me.
Yeah, I didn’t think so. Anyway, I have always liked PSE and have used past versions to great success. I think I will like PSE10 just as much, regardless the fact my view of Adobe is that much dimmer for the shamefully bad experience of late. This has been a pretty sucky couple of days, and from the boards and complaints I have found out it's the exception rather than the rule, but exceptional nonetheless.
Now I shall screenshot this thread and publish it everywhere I can find a place for it. I will call out the responses I received from Adobe (none) and the great support I received from Adobe (none) and the quality service I received from Adobe (none). Then I will do my level best to remember what the heck I was doing that made me want to buy PSE in the first place: there was a photo of...something, and I wanted to...do something. What was it? I've spent so much time in Adobe FailShop I have forgotten what I was doing here in this bottomless abyss of fail...
Ta taa, Adobe Support. Love you, really I do. True story.