Ok.. fixed it
Someone on another forum tipped me off to Nero's help system. Even thought I wasn't using Nero it still is a valuable resource. As per the recommendation on Nero's site I renamed the SCSI1HLP.VXD file to SCSI1HLP.VX_ in the WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS directory... Apparently it causes trouble in a number of cases. That seems to have done the trick.
-schu