Okay. I figured out the problem. Loaded up POI on an XP machine and it failed there too. But, the error messages and screen prompts were more useful.

Basically, the only way I was able to make it work was to put my GPX files in the temp directory as well since no matter where I pointed to the GPX files on my machine, the path name constructed for the import poi file was in the temp directory (i.e. the program took the name that I specified but not the full path from the dialog box). So, when it came time to actually import into the db, of course, the GPX file wasn't found. Unless it was really in the temp directory.

After figuring that out, it worked on Vista and XP.

BTW, Just as a debugging note, there were two dlls during the install process that I didn't install as my machine had later versions of those dlls. This was true on Vista and on XP. I doubt this was significant, but you never know. And, I can't remember the dll names so this is probably not that helpful