Got it!!
Just so you know....
I have a laptop that is connected to a work domain. The more searching that I did, the more the error codes in the event viewer was pointing me in the direction that the problem was related to a corrupt security policy from the network but...
Just for shits and giggles, I tried a few things including removing IE7 (latest version) and BAM! Everything was right in the world. It seems that with the install of IE7, it disables a lot of back end functions like installs being able to register a DCOM object like ActiveSync (and others). YIPPEE!!