Mass Effect 1 Won't Launch At All

bought mass effect 1 2 and 3 today seperately and after downloading ME1 i tried to launch it. didn't launch at all, did absolutely nothing. an Mass effect .exe popped up in the processes on task managerbut that was it. i have tried, patching to 1.02 (it's already at 1.02) running as admin, running origin as admin, making it run for xp service pack 3.

i don't really fancy doing this method of 'fixing' because it may mess the serial key up and quite frankly i've sat on chat for origin support now for 40 minutes and they arn't responding whatsoever. http://answers.ea.com/t5/Mass-Effect-1/PC-Mass-Effect-Won-t-Start-A-New-Solution/m-p/1435670#M2911

i've put the masseffectlauncher.exe in the root of the installed files? i'm not too sure on the terminology and tried to run it but it said it can't find the .xml. i would appreciate it if i could have some help.