WLM 8.5 Problem

[NickM]

I have WLM 8.5 installed, I'm running Vista Ultimate 32.
WLM used to work just fine but for some reason now it wont.

If I sign in using the version that loaded at start up then it works for a few mins then freezes up.

If I try opening another copy after that one has frozen, or disabling the start up one and trying to open a copy then it loads the msnmsgr.exe in task manager but nothing ever shows up on screen to let me log in..

I tried running the repair thing from control panel but it gets as far as 'gather required etc' and shutting down outlook then nothing happens.

Any ideas?

edit: I uninstalled WLM, restarted, and tried to reinstall. When I try to reinstall it says 'upgrading..' then says 'the older version of WLM could not be removed'
agh this is really annoying.

it probably has something to do with the fact the control panel still thinks there is a copy of WLM from 16/3/07, when I try to remove that version I get the error:

 

[NickM]

I've tried closing all open programs, disabling firewall & AV and I still cant get it to install

edit: I think there might be a larger issue, I just tried to open windows media player and it does the same as msn did, exe shows up in task manager but no window appears. Also when I tried to open event viewer it says "service unavailable verify that the service is running", when I try to start the service I get the error: "Windows could not start the Windows Event Log service on Local computer. Error 4201 the instance name passed was not recognised as valid by a WMI data provider."

is there something I can do to repair vista? (preferably not a reinstall )