Well, that was an odd one.
When Noel asked if I was using the latest update, I almost took offense at the notion that I would post this whole thread and try a million different troubleshooting options without even making sure I had the latest patch...but there you have it. I updated it and it works.
Thanks Noel!
As an addendum, to take a stab at what may have been an issue (beucuse I never had this issue prior, and this was not an issue cited as fixed in the patch notes) I confirmed that I had installed the RealTrack patch which was issued at a later date than the v625 I was running the core program on, so maybe there was some sort of conflict there? Who knows?
All's well that ends well, as they say :-)
Thanks again to Noel, and all the rest of you, for your patience and assistance!