Background: trying to upgrade i760 to WM6.1 using Vista Ultimate 32 bit

I have been on hold with Verizon / Samsung for over 90 minutes and no sign of a fix, so I'm hoping someone here can help. If I run the Vista upgrade tool on my laptop, I was getting the ExtractResourceFile error, but I wasn't if I ran it under the built-in Administrator account. I installed the Modem driver that topquark linked to, and now my account gets the same errror that the Administrator account receives:
"This application only supports Windows Vista OS. Please click the OK button to close"

I've downloaded the tool many times and ran it many different ways and now consistently receive this message. Anyone else run into this? I disabled UAC in Vista to see if that would help but no luck. The good news is my phone's not bricked, the bad news is I can't even get to a point to make my phone a brick

Any help is appreciated!