Are you using IE8, by the way? If so, see this topic:
http://thetournamentdirector.net/forums/index.php?topic=1366.0I only mention this because you noted that Vista apparently tells you that IE7 "is not supported on this operating system". What you are seeing is not among the symptoms I see when one is using IE8, but you never know.
The problem seems to be that the software is unable to access your filesystem. This can manifest itself in a number of ways, but in lieu of any real error messages from the system, the TD will abort because it cannot read the language catalogs - as you are seeing. I'd say that north of 95% of the time this is caused by Windows Script becoming corrupted in some manner. I do not know *how* Windows Script becomes corrupted, but I'm sure the ways are numerous. The fix is typically to re-install Windows Script. This also fixes the problem about 95% of the time.
If you cannot re-install Windows Script, the fall-back is to re-install Internet Explorer. I do not know why you are unable to do that. I would poke around the Windows download site that I noted in my previous post and see if you can find the IE7 download for Vista, if there is one specifically.
You may try the following steps, too. They are for other specific issues, but I suppose it is possible you are having the same problem but not necessarily seeing the same error message.
First, since it's the easiest, you may try re-registering the following DLLs and trying to run the TD again (from the Windows Start menu, select "Run..." then enter each of these in turn, pressing ENTER after):
regsvr32 jscript.dll
regsvr32 wshom.ocx
regsvr32 scrrun.dll
If that doesn't work, try the following:
1) Select "Run" on the Start Menu and type "regedit"; this will open the Windows registry editor
2) You need to locate the registry key HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Scripting.FileSystemObject. Open the node HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and then scroll down to the Scripting.FileSystemObject node. There are thousands of keys here, so it's way down there
3) Right-click the key and select Permissions. Take a mental note of who has permissions. We're not going to change anything here, but may need to come back to it
4) Press the "Advanced" button near the bottom
5) Select the Owner tab
6) Under "Current owner of this item:", is there a user listed? If so, skip the rest
7) You'll need to assign an owner to this item. In the "Change owner to:" box, is the "Administrator" account listed?
8 ) If so, select it, then press the Apply button.
9) If not, press the "Other Users or Groups" button, type in "Administrator" and press the "Check Names" button. The name should become underlined when it verifies the user; press OK
10) Select the Administrator user and press the Apply button