Adobe CS3 Crash on startup, Initializing Palettes

After about 6 hours of repairing, uninstalling, reinstalling, updating and no luck, I stumbled upon this adobe knowledge base article:

Creative Suite 3 application crashes during "Initializing palettes". (Windows)

Solution:

Adobe CS3 requires a font to startup in Windows XP and Windows Vista. They are as follows:

* On Windows XP,Creative Suite 3 requires the Tahoma font.
* OnWindows Vista,Creative Suite 3requires the Segoe-UI font.

If only I had searched google for "initializing palettes" instead of the actual error message at crash point. go figure!