Solved Installer doesn't run

OK this is a windows 7 problem but I don't think it's localized to 7 (and I'm in a hurry and don't want to take time to sign up over at the seven forum haha) so I'll start here and move there if you guys can't fix it.

My grandmother bought a Sony Vaio with 7 Home premium on it...about a year ago. We helped her set it up and everything since she's technologically illiterate. Today she asked me to update her AV for her, but I came across another problem. She wanted a special screensaver installed on it, which was weird because I know I had gotten it all set up when she first got it. SO I went to change it and sure enough it was all messed up and I couldn't get it to work. So i redownloaded it, and tried to uninstall the messed up one. Except nothing happened. It gave me the usual UAC prompt and then nothing happened. So I tried just installing it again, same thing. UAC prompt, then nothing happens.

I tried this several times then opened task manager to find 3 of the installers running in processes. So I reset the computer. Still didn't help. Except now it just showed up in Task Manager for several seconds then dissapeared. Running as admin made no difference either way, not did compatibility mode.

So I made a new user account with admin privileges (hers already was admin btw) and tried everything again from there. On the first attempt it brought up the installer, so I figured it was a messed up account and tried to run the uninstaller first to clean it out. But then it started acting exactly the same again, would give the UAC prompt, then nothing. SO I went to windows update, installed everything (including a service pack) and restarted. STILL NOTHING. Finally, I disabled UAC entirely. Didn't work. So I went into safe mode, and IT WORKED! Perfectly. Not one problem.

So my question is, what's the matter?! All the other programs seem to work fine, it just wont do anything with an installer in an .exe. Any ideas would be great. Sorry for the long explanation

PS-I ran the SFC command, and did an updated scan with Malwarebytes (which strangely installed just fine).

Hi Slammer have you tried to do a system restore going back at least 5 days before the problem started...

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/194765-system-recovery-options.html

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/76905-system-restore-how.html

This should do the trick, I would also have her do a full AV sacn and a malwarebytes full scan also just to be safe...

Her restore points only go back to 3 days, and besides I'd bet this problem is months old. And I did with Malwarebytes, I really doubt it's virus-related at this point. And I don't think we have an installation disc to do a startup repair either.

Also, I have some more info. Although it worked great in safe mode (installing it) when you go back to normal it won't show a preview in the screensaver dialog, and the settings button does nothing as well. Again, all of this worked great in safe mode, and I know I got it working a year ago when she first got it. All other programs seem to function normally (except for the first program I downloaded to test it with, that one gave some weird error and I'm not going to worry about it) But she really wants that screensaver! the event log was unhelpful as well. I found the error, but online there was no help for it.

Does not work in normal mode
Works in safe mode
If it works in clean boot, follow instructions
If it does not work in clean boot, its probably a driver
How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

Ok I'm going to test other screen savers and see if maybe it's just a problem with installing those. Then I'll try clean boot. If clean boot doesn't work and it is a driver issue, do you know which one it would be?

Not off the top, but we have a test that sometimes works.

Ok others work great. I'm going to mess around with the actual .scr files for a bit and see what happens. Back in a bit.

Nope. Here goes the clean boot. Stand by.

Hmmm. Nope. Clean boot with everything disabled (except system services like that page said) didn't fix it. Next?

Also, here's a pic of the event viewer info for this problem, if anyone can get any help out of that. Yes, those are all from the same program, all the same thing. I tried to tun it a lot...

Well I haven't found a fix for it, but I did find a very similar screensaver on the internet and used that one instead. The picture quality in it is far less, but she has bad eyesight anyway so I doubt she'll mind I'll go ahead and mark this as solved anyway though, since I doubt there's a way to get a screensaver meant to older versions of windows to work properly in 7. I just can't figure out why it works fine in safe mode...

Anyway, if you guys have any programs that would let me extract the screensaver and resave it in a way that would let it work normally, that'd be cool. I can't find one on Google.