OK, so I was working on getting crossfire working again after some update knocked it out, and having no luck.  Some sites suggested uninstalling Service Pack 1 -- let me tell you now, save yourself a lot of grief, do not uninstall service pack 1.  That turned out very badly, incredibly badly.  The argument is that a Windows component has been damaged, and maybe that fixes it.  However, sfc /scannow will have that same effect without costing you a couple hours of recovery -- and it won't actually fix the problem in all cases.

 So anyway, I decide I'm going to reinstall the drivers -- catalyst install manager doesn't work though, and so I look up and again I see crazy advice on the Internet, so here's what I try:

Start > Control Panel > Classic View > Problem Reports

Report a problem with Catalyst Install Manager

Voila, it tells me to go to KB961894 for a solution.  Here's the download page:

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/KB961894/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=2067

This fixes it, but per the discussion, there might be other issues with using the hot fix.  I hope that this saves someone else some time.