So, any other suggestions?
edit: <lj user="terrycloth"> solved the mystery! Vista/Win7 has a security feature that prevents some programs from running unless you use "run as administrator". So I set the program to always run as administrator and now it works normally. Except that the pop-up warning me it could change my computer and asking me if I want to let it run comes up every time I launch, which is kind of annoying. But <i>that</i> annoying.