Some of the DLLs that the old 2.11 install lays down are not registerred. I'm working on a new installer that will register the needed runtimes withotu the need to run the old install, but for now you still need to run the old installer to register the DLLs. Once you do that, the new buddy drops should run okay from anywhere. The reason the dialogs arn't coming up is due to the missing runtimes.
Also, are you running Vista? You must be running as a local admin.