Hurrah!

A sneaky trick – create an HKLM\Software\Microsoft\WHOS key in your registry; restart the machine; let windows update run...

It picks up an upgrade (that will not install until I shutdown and upgrade for some reason).

Power on, plug in phone HALLELUJAH!  Phone is syncing again (with a very small bit of setup work).

Wunderbar.  Now I’m more content!