I got min fixed!!!!!
It turns out that After effects did not have permission to access any other part of the C drive except the user folders. I verified this by trying to save the project to C: and it was denied. I think with quicktime renders, it tries to update something in system folder and was being denied.
I turned off UAC and ran AE as an administrator and that seems to have done the trick.
(2 hours with adobe on the phone and 1 with HP and they could not figure it out!!!)