And as I figured, no sooner than I post this question did I solve the problem!
So on my laptop, I have my old install of EQ ( live ) and I have my EQ Emu folder. Well, I modified my desktop shortcut to point to my EQ Emu eqgame.exe. However, I forgot to modify the 'start in' path...and it just all messed up! Corrected the short cut, and all works as expected! Sigh...
Thanks though! Hopefully this helps someone else one day!