Could be the drivers for the drive itself are corrupted, or have been screwed with somehow.
You could try uninstalling the drive via device manager (best to do it from safe mode) then letting Windows reinstall it when you reboot. Should be able to do it itself.
Archonsod, that was a good idea. Unfortunately it didn't work. In the meantime I called Tiger about one of those usb drives. They are having a promotion where I got a 2gig drive and anti-virus all for free including shipping. Maybe things today are getting better. It'll be here in about a week. In the meantime, I'll have a chance to peruse the manual. Best I've ever seen.
Btw, just to make sure I have all the patches, I downloaded the latest and a 3.10 quickfix v3. Is there anything else I need?
And I'd just like to comment. You folks are very helpful and I appreciate it.
Good idea. Except that my satellite crashed a few weeks ago and I'm on dialup. The 6 meg patch download was a big deal. I'll just wait for the usb drive and go for the tutorial.