OK... I thought it was a problem I had accidentally accepting a game invite on steam chat for another game (while Elite was also launching) that skewed my access. That sent me into a night of rebuilding (twice) when trying the File Verification thing first and than trying to clear [User/AppData/...] for a fresh launch also failed to re-connect. The first rebuild (2 hours fresh and clean download) started ok, and then went sideways again when I tried to push my bindings backup file back into the AppData folder. After trying that and getting the same lockup I was again unable to restore functionality even when I put the AppData directories back to original states. So.. another fresh rebuild and another two hours. This time I sat through the bindings configuration all by hand and stayed out of the AppData folders to be sure. I think there is some more to application security than there used to be. But I could be just getting old. Seems ok now.