I was hoping that installing Core would solve the "Armory failed to spawn the DB!" error. The error mentions the dbLog.txt file, and the btcarmory.com/docs/pathing page discusses the armoryqt.conf file. My computer has neither (I use a third party search, I'm sure the files don't exist).

At this point I'm guessing that the Core, which is now at 13% after 9.5 hours, isn't going to be of any use with the Armory error.