I installed Premiere Elements 12 trial version and it seems to work. But, so sign of any related FLEXnet files.
I uninstalled APE12, ran CCleaner, rebooted, installed APE9, rebooted. Tried it and the problem is still there.
What I don't understand is that if was running fine before. This only started after I had to reformat my harddrive and reinstalled everything.