EUREKA!!! Thank you very, very, very much!!!
All it took was removing the SD card from my Dell laptop and both HX Edit 3.0 and Helix Native 3.1 downloaded and worked seamlessly. I then put the SD card back in (being a glutton for punishment) and not surprisingly both programs crashed. I t hen removed the SD card and both again worked. Thank you very, very much!
As to Line 6, seriously??? You have very sophisticated software and your software engineers couldn't figure out that SD cards could blow up their programs? Then you don't put that in your notes to users? I spent at least 40 hours trying to find the root cause; and the answer rested with datacommando!!!