BrowserLab problems - used to work, can no longer connect now

Question

I was using Browser Lab thru Dreamweaver CS5.5 (v11.5, build 5344) with no problems whatsoever until recently. For no apparent reason, it stopped working. Now when I try to connect, I just get that "preparing for preview..." progress bar that never goes away.
I've gone over all the other threads in this forum concerning this problem, and I would seem to meet all of Adobe's criteria for successfully running this tool; and none of the fixes that worked for others are working for me.
Dreamweaver is up to date. My Adobe ID is up to date. I have cleared browser cookies and caches, restarted everything that can be restarted, etc. etc. etc. All to no avail.
I have noticed a couple weird things: after the tool failed in DW, I attempted to access it by first connecting to BrowserLab in my browser (no problem), then going back to DW and previewing; that actually worked but ONLY two or three times, out of well over a dozen attempts.
The other thing I noticed is that in my extensions manager, there is no BrowserLab extension listed. I don't know if that's normal or not; obviously, it's installed, since I have the BL panel available in DW.
I am losing my mind over this... any help/solution would be *very* appreciated. I'm trying to get a job out the door by tomorrow, I have come to rely on BL for IE testing since acquiring DW CS5.5, so this is putting me in an exceptionally bad situation.

Answer 1

Hi Mark,
Fair enough, I guess it should come as no surprise that you're very busy and I  certainly can empathize with that. I let my frustration get the better of me and I may have been, well, starting to panic a bit.. perhaps it's time to re-read that Hitchhiker's Guide
In any case, I do greatly appreciate your reply, thank you very much. And your particular response about my 'license status' gave me the first good laugh I've had all day. Right you are.
To the point, then:
1. I'm running Mac OS 10.6.8
2. BL version no. is: 1.6.0.971M.273042
3. It's not an error message, just the endless "preparing for preview..." progress bar. It only goes away if I cancel the preview. I've not yet seen any error message, even though I've let that bar 'spin' for a *long* time. Here:
4. As requested:
5. Yes, that option has been there ever since I installed the BL extension back in the summer:
Like I said this all worked just fine... until it didn't. I'm at a loss to explain what could've changed. I spent literally hours trying to figure this out w/o success. The only "change" I'm aware of at this point, is  that I changed my Adobe ID password since originally installing the BL extension in DW; but I've updated that at the CS Live site already, and the problem persists. And anyway, I really can't imagine that would account for the missing extension weirdness, and it also seems to me that if that were the problem, I wouldn't have been able to access BL the way I described in my first post (please let me repeat that that method only worked about 2 or 3 times out of a good 15-20 attempts; I've had no success getting it to work again).
So.. a good puzzle here? I do hope you enjoy them... I have not been having fun w/ this
Thanks again for your reply Mark, and I will patiently (but eagerly) await your answer.
Best regards,
Tom