The debug.err is in the external link in the first post.  (Should probably have mentioned that.)

In "my documents/My Games/Elemental" :

The units folder has a "icons" folder.  Both of these folders are empty.

The "tiles" folder has a "shadows" folder, both folders are empty.

The "stamps", "Saves", "Race", "Items", and "Effects" folders are empty.

In "Documents and settings/All Users/Application Data/Stardock/elemental: War of Magic" folder, The "screens" and "images" folders are empty, the "Impulse Reactor" and "Temp" files have several sub folders with files in them.

I tried uninstalling and reinstalling using Impulse, got the same problem.

debug.err

Tried again with an uninstall.reinstall, still have no files in the My Documents/My Games/elemental folder (apart from debug).

Steps taken:

1.  Use impulse to uninstall Elemental.

2.  The C:/Documents and Settings/All Users/Application Data/Stardock/Elemental-War of Magic and D:/My Documents/My Games/Elemental folders still exist after doing this uninstall, so I delete those.

3.  Reinstall using Impulse.  Reinstalling installs the game in C:/Program Files/Stardock Games/Elemental.  It does not install any D:/My Documents/My Games/Elemental folder.  It may also not have installed the C:/Documents and Settings/Application Data/Stardock/Elemental folder either, but unfortunately I've forgotted at this point.

4.  I move the elemental folder to D:/Program files/Stardock Games/Elemental.  The D: drive is where I keep all other stardock games (the folder paths are equivalent to what they would be in the C drive), but I did not see a way in impulse to install games directly here.  I move the folder to the D: drive, than use whichever impulse function (forget the name) it is where I select the folder location for an installed game.  I also update to the current beta (The game was installed at 0.0, or some other 0 number.)

5. I attempt to verify installation.  Verifying says that elemental is installed correctly.

6. I attempt to run elemental.  The game plays that "You travel north" video up tyo the "Press space bar" screen.  I press space bar, the game crashes to desktop.  A "D:/My Documents/My Games/Elemental" folder is created, with a bunch of subfolders, a debug.err file, and a prefs file.  All of the subfolders are empty.  The "C:/Documents and Settings/Stardock/Elemental" folder is also here, though again I have forgotten whether it was missing before.

7.  Verify installation again says that the game is installed correctly.

The pastebin link for the debuig file is here:

http://pastebin.com/RGWBiQy4

The Beta files were moved to go with the other Stardock games.  The stardock games in general were moved to clear up space on the C drive.

I'll try your suggestion and see how it goes.  I'm not sure what you mean by "not telling the rgistry...etc.", so what do you think is happening in more detail?

Updating to the current patch did not help.

I just tried to remove the program using impulse, thinking that perhaps the "add/remove" program window might not have detected these uninstalls/reinstalls properly, elemental has been removed from there as well.  It seems ot have gone as before, where impulse doesn't remove the My Documents/My Games/Elemental folder or the Documents and Settings folder.

What would I need to remove from the computer to try and get rid of any traces of elemental?  (to try and get a completely fresh installation, like it was not there.  (I'm not sure whether this is the particular problem or not, in fact I'm not sure what the problem actually could be, a more thourough explanation above would be helpful, but if this is the problem I could at least go about trying ot fix it in this way.)

Edit:  Also just realized I forgot to change Impulse to direct files to the D drive (where elemental is).  changing this made no difference, the files are still missing.

Having some number of "No files found matching mask" messages in the debug.err is completely normal.

The files in the My Documents folder are created by the game itself, not the installation, and are left upon uninstall as they may contain savegames, etc.

Please see the beta reporting sticky for details about obtaining a dump file from the crash which can help the devs isolate your problem.

Tried again a few days ago, while deselecting the "protect user from unauthorized program activity"  same thing happened.  I haven't been able ot run it as an administrator (since other people have used it for other bugs) to see if that would do anything. (The computer was given by someone else, and I am not sure what the password is.)

debug.err: http://pastebin.com/FAt7j8WE

dump file: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5070559/Elemental0_291-2010-03-05T20-58-07-733.zip

Is this really a wierd problem that no one ese has had?