PT Express suddenly stopped loading...iLok authorization corrupted?

[mr.algy]

After weeks of working with PT Express without incident, it abruptly stopped loading. After inserting the dongle and double-clicking the PT desktop icon, this message comes up:
“Unable to locate hardware. Make sure your hardware is connected and turned on. Click “OK” when the hardware is ready.”
The hardware (Mbox mini) is in fact connected; all its lights go on when the usb is plugged in and when I loaded Audacity, that program recognized the interface.
I un- and re-connected the thing and rebooted the laptop numerous times and consulted the Avid PT forums. Got nowhere.
I believe that the problem has to do with the iLok dongle required to load PT. Last week I attached a new Seagate drive I bought to back up my PT work.. When I attempted to load PT, a message came up which said:
“WARNING! Loss of plug-in authorization keys may occur.
This system contains one or more drive(s) formatted with NTFS, and which have names longer than 11 characters. This combination is known to corrupt some InterLok plug-in authorizations. In order to remedy this issue before corruption can occur, rename
NTFS volumes to drive names that are 11 characters or less. Next, re-launch pro tools and this dialog should not appear.”
I know NTFS is not the same as FAT32, but that’s about it. There are certainly files and folders on with names longer than 11 letters on my laptop that didn’t cause any problem.. Anyway, I detached the drive, relaunched and PT loaded, no problem. Since then, I attach the drive after PT is loaded or when it’s not loaded at all.
But I must have messed up and loaded PT with the drive attached. There is clearly nothing wrong with the Mbox Mini; if I load Audacity or Reaper (which I’ve downloaded and installed but not yet worked with), each recognizes it without difficulty.
I don’t understand why the message is “Unable to locate hardware” rather than something about lack of authorization, but it’s the only explanation I can think of.
So, given that the authorization is corrupted, how do I un-corrupt it? I’ve written to both Avid and iLok tech support and will call Avid if I don’t hear from them first. ILok has no phone support number at all.
If anyone has a solution to this problem, I’d greatly appreciate learning it. This situation is becoming very difficult and expensive for me.

[mr.algy]

Forgot to include my system specs:
Laptop is a Lenovo G570 running Windows 7 Home Premium with SP 1
64-bit os
8 gigs of RAM