to follow up: it seems that the previous update (which my computer totally failed to acknowledge until about 2 weeks ago) screwed things up. so, out of curiosity, I checked to see if there were any updates - there was!!
and it all works again (yay!) so far... and I was able to log in. fare thee well 7 day warning!
this has not been a good week for audio around here. one prog sorted, 2 to go ?