Hi
It is a new build of Win7, i upgraded to IE11 from Windows updates and then found this problem with PSE.
So now I have turned IE11 off in windows features and uninstalled the update in "installed updates", which gave me IE8, ran the setup.exe from the PSE CD using the compatibility assistant in Win 7, it picked WinXP service pack 2 and now it is working....yes!!
Thank you for the help, hans-g, it certainly pointed me in the right direction to resolve the issue, it is for a client of mine who uses PSE (that he bought years ago)....