The launcher only has indirectly something to do with freelancer thus it must have something to do with the launcher itself (thats my idea). And as you already did reinstall more than 2 times for me it sounds like a dll problem (dll of your windows system - not the freelancer dlls).
i still think you falsely deleted some VB6 runtime files - either by deleting a program that had used those files too or you corrupted your winsxs folder somehow.
Nevertheless - good that its working again. Now you can go on your killing spree tour through the whole universe and kill everything that moves (but watch out for the players starting with DC in the name ;))