I could soooo hug you, btuch.. Thanks for all of your input today, its been so very helpful (You too Trumpcard, last night!)
Here's what I changed, for the reference -
In my windoze tcp/ip settings, I changed the gateway to be the external IP rather than the internal of the linux box.
Added the line into the windows hosts file.
Voila... on top of a clean directory. I'm in!
Tell ya what.. I owe ya a drink.. or maybe two
Thanks again.