The initial reason for me uninstalling was this very problem I'm having. after I was able to uninstall and reinstall, the game no longer starts period. No errors or anything. I click on the icon(none of Civ4 .exe's work) and I get a very short hour glass and absolutely nothing happens. Grrr still stuck apparently :(

Please note It's been working fine up to 3 days ago.

I've narrowed it down to the C:\Documents and Settings\<USERNAME>\My Documents\My Games. the Civ4config.ini file is linked to there and there isn't anything in there corresponding to Civ4? how do I go about getting the file?

That *.ini file is created once the game starts.

well one thing I do know is that it's connected to my main user account, because I created a guest user account last night and I was able to play it, but still unable to play on the main account.