I replaced Dashboard.exe with one of my own that executes
Code:
java -jar C:\Users\developer\wpilib\tools\SmartDashboard.jar
and it works to load the smart dashboard. I saved a copy of the default dashboard of course.
Not sure why the command line didn't work either, but enough fooling around this this for now. if anyone wants a copy of it, let me know.
Thanks for all the suggestions,
Brian