ok.

so, as i sort through more and more of this, i'm coming to the conclusion that, for whatever reason, a windows update was pushed down on the night of the second, and it's had some pretty disastrous consequences that are continuing to unfold and are requiring i do things like run hotfixes, which i don't want to do.

i don't want to run updates.

i don't want to run hotfixes.

and, i don't want to want run "fix it tools", either.

what i want to do is roll back this update. of course, i don't have system restore on, either.

i'm just not going to feel comfortable with this system the way it is. there's something not right, here.

so, i'm going to format the drive again, rebuild the files and copy a registry from last month over. i won't be able to start that until after 19:00.

for now, i'm going to take a short nap.