Woo hoo!!!
I got it to work!
I threw the term "rds1enu.msi" into google and only got three pages of returns (mostly from people who had uninstalled FL and had this rds1enu error message pop up with a bunch of other programs). No help from most of them, as the individuals didn't want to reinstall Freelancer, they just wanted to get rid of the error messages.
Found out from a couple of the sites that this is a MS Game Redistributable Pack 1 problem. No real help in fixing it, but at least it's nice to know that I'm not the only one who's seen it, and that it's a real program.
Checked out a site in German, out of desperation since I'm about as biligual as a tortoise (which is to say, not at all as far as I know), and they had the following in English (yay! I can read that!) and it appeared to address the problem I was having:
Freelancer Zonder Geluid
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QuoteDisplay MoreOplossing:
1. Uninstall any 3rd party codec pack or the Nimo Codec pack from your system.
2. Uninstall Freelancer.
3. Go to the following directory, C:\WINDOWS\system32 and delete the file “l3codecp.acm”. If there happens to be another file named “l3codeca.acm”, delete this too.
4. If your system is Windows 2000 or XP, open the system registry editor (regedit) from the RUN command window.
5. Locate and delete the following key: \HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32\msacm.l3acm
6. Load the Freelancer installation CD and locate the REDIST folder. Within the REDIST folder, double click on the file named “WMFDist.exe” and follow on-screen instructions, Also within the REDIST folder open the MGSRDS folder and double click on the file named "RDS1ENU.MSI" and follow on-screen instructions.
7. Install Freelancer
Ik heb wat kleine dingen toegevoegd aan de readme, hoop hiermee iemand te helpen die het hetzelfde probleem heeft
Freelancer heeft nu perfect geluid
I followed the instructions out of desperation (although instead of deleting “l3codecp.acm” and “l3codeca.acm” I simply renamed them “zz-l3codecp.acm” and "zz-l3codeca.acm" to keep them if I needed them for something and to drop them down to the bottom of the file list in the WINNT\system32 folder).
The registry file had already been cleaned by my efforts earlier in the day (I cannot praise CCleaner enough, though there may be better programs out there) so I no longer had the "\HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsNT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32\msacm.l3acm" key in it.
I followed the steps almost exactly (except where noted above), reinstalled FL, and BOOM! It's Alive!!! ALIVE!!!
Sorry for the long-winded post, but if anyone else out there runs into this problem and looks here in Lancer's Reactor, I wanted it to be as detailed as they might need.
I've gotten a couple of hiccups here and there, mostly with the graphics processing, but nothing that would stop gameplay or really bother me. My system's kind of old anyway, so that might be part of the problem.
The key to the whole problem seemed to be deleting those files, and then clicking on the “WMFDist.exe” and "RDS1ENU.MSI" files.
Hope this helps anyone else who might have this infuriating problem!
Thanks for you guys for trying to help me out! I really appreciate it!