Specific 1383 Crash in Windows 7 (x86) Directory

[Nito]

TL;DR - Installing to 'C:\Program Files (x86)\FTL' in Windows 7 doesn't work. Installing anywhere else does. What could cause that? What association am I missing? Did GM 1.5, BPaB, Descent Into Darkness or FTL 1.03.3 do anything less than obvious during their installation process? I feel like I'm missing something obvious.

I own the Steam and DRM Free versions of FTL. The OS of the machine in question is Windows 7 Home Premium with everything up to date. The last successful installation of FTL in the location was 1.03.3 with BPaB and Descent Into Darkness installed via Modman 1.5.

Updated Steam client with no mods works correctly.
Updated Humble client with no mods works correctly. An occasional issue with Mind Control seems to have been corrected through the troubleshooting of my bigger problem.

Issue: When installed to 'C:\Program Files (x86)' FTL will not work correctly.
http://i.imgur.com/SDGKFvf.jpg
No crash file created.

History: I keep multiple installs just in case something like this happens. I started the AE upgrade process by uninstalling FTL and deleting the remaining files. After installing 1.5.4. to a clean 'C:\Program Files (x86)\FTL' folder my problems started. Every time FTL loaded from that location it would still be trying to load 'Descent Into Darkness.' This suggested that my previous uninstall was not thorough enough. I tried absolutely everything. The only thing that had any effect was rolling back the folder, patching to vanilla with the mod manager and then uninstalling it again. Now instead of the 'Descent Into Darkness' splash screen I get the pictured crash right before loading is complete. I have scoured everything I could possibly think of. I may have even discovered and deleted a Trojan, but can't seem to fix this problem. Fixes related to Captain's Edition have no effect
http://www.reddit.com/r/ftlgame/comment ... er/cgk2wyq
http://steamcommunity.com/app/212680/di ... 412965730/
I've moved my profile to avoid some potential problem there. When I delete it a fresh install in the standard 'C:\Program Files (x86)\FTL' creates a new profile folder, but crashes before adding ae_prof.sav.

Baffling: If I rename the same installation 'C:\Program Files (x86)\FTL' to 'C:\Program Files (x86)\FTL2' the game loads just fine! There is some Windows attribute I am overlooking. When comparing fresh installations all of the files are identical. There is some ghost haunting any installation made to 'C:\Program Files (x86)\FTL' I fully recognize that this isn't a fault with FTL, but if anyone has any expertise they can share I would greatly appreciate it. This is driving me crazy.

Sorry for the length, but I wanted to be thorough. Would happily give more information if necessary.

Also, I post here because this is low priority. The game works fine in most circumstances :] I would happily repost where necessary including Get Satisfaction if I find a solution. Most of the hits related to this error come from the mod forum, then Reddit and then Steam.

[Matthew]

One of the mod managers restores mods unless the game is placed into a new directory. As those are community tools, I don't really know the exact details of the problem and what causes it. But that crash is caused by a mod, and the correlation of one directory being considered 'bad' matches with that known issue. You might want to post in the modding forum of whatever tool you're using?