I want to thank everyone who provided suggestions, tips, feedback, etc... , since it was very much appreciated by me.
I have spent a LOT of time (easily 15-20 hours) trying out different scenarios and researching the problem, and I even went out and purchased a brand new computer, USB cables, and I had my friend bring over his III (it worked fine on my original computer setup).
This unit has been played on by me less than 8 times so things like this should not happen to a brand new unit :-(
Thank you again for your efforts to help me get this fixed, and I sent an email to the Fractal Support so hopefully there will not be a lot of down time for the unit.