I did receive a very quick response to my question from VPW support.
The developer? said that there had been a couple of other instances
exactly the same as mine. He had two suggestions: downloading DirectX
from Microsoft (even though I already had it) and, if that didn't work,
sending a Belarc report that gives a detail look at my system to
support for further troubleshooting. I tried the download without
success and decided to stop at this point.
Happy Holidays to all.