This is one of those "Doh!" moments, but after months of screwing around with getting Direct FTP to work on XP/Vista/Win7 it finally dawned on me. Uninstall the program, reinstall (and let it remove previous instances - even though you've done that) AS ADMINISTRATOR. Now check the "Run as Administrator" checkbox from Properties at the Start menu. Fire it up and it runs clean as a whistle (although really...how clean could a whistle be?...).

Scott, you'll be happy to know that it's consistent enough that I've uninstalled Filezilla!!!

-Gordy