Battlefield 3 Installation Issues

Ok, so EA tried to help and failed (I know that they usually are just chart troubleshooters, but it was worth a shot for being free). Here is my issue:

I had been playing BF3 on a brand new Alienware from the date of its release until the 8th of December. I went to work, came home, tried to play and it said that BF3 needed an update. So I clicked on the "update" and it proceeded to download. When it came time to install, however, it never completed. It would download fully and then start installation until it came back with this:


I tried a dozen times, including setting up a new administrator account, a clean start, etc.

So then I uninstalled the game and everything EA on my computer as well as Visual C++.

Now, when I go to install BF3 from scratch, I can't even do that. Both from disk and from download, it gets to where I can install the game and so I click on that in Origin. My computer goes into it's little think mode and a dialog box flashes on the screen too fast to read or click, but whatever it is that I can't select, Origin reverts to "Ready to install" on the BF3 selection.

I've tried to isolate whatever is interfering with Origin and BF3, but my computer knowledge in this area is casual. EA gave me a free copy of Dead Space 2 and that installed and works just fine.

Has anyone had this kind of issue before?