Thanks for your responses.
To Boggin, I ran the repair program last evening after updating to the most recent version with no improvement. There was one small problem in pre-scan that the program fixed and there were issues running chkdsk that were also fixed. I also tried to download the Windows Agent but it came up with a message I'd never seen before. Something about the installer having an unrecoverable error.
To Julian, if you think it's important I can run the prescan again. Is there a log somewhere that I can send you?
To jraju, thanks for your comments.I did run the repair tool last evening but the module installer still will not start.
There is a Microsoft fix that I would appreciate your opinion on.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-ca/kb/959077 Given the number of users that have this problem, it amazes me that MS cannot write an automated program fix for this. I can follow instructions as well as anybody but the permissions part in the middle I have no experience with. That said, from what I've read, this file is key to the module installer working. Any further thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks all.