To access the technical support forum you need to go to your profile (link in the yellow bar at top of page) and there is a section there for you to enter your license key, once you have done this you can access the tech support forum.
As for the original problem the only thing I could suggest is that you totally uninstall everything and then start again. If that doesn't work it may even be worth re-downloading the patch incase you got a dodgy version.
