ok, so this isn't quite what i thought, but...

i think i was right about fixing the user permissions, but not in the way that i thought.

the funny semaphores do actually appear to be attached to the image backup, not the bios in the laptop. i don't know what's launching them.

but, what seems to be happening is that as soon as i fix the user permissions, the windows update succeeds, some of the shit gets installed and i get the lock screen, when it can't find the driver.

so, i was worried about the funny user names being remote users using backdoors to get in. rather, i think that the broken permissions were preventing the script from running.

again: i actually don't want to do this. i want to work on the liner notes. 

so....

.....if the machine is stable so long as i keep the permissions broken, i should keep the permissions broken. 

that means that i'm going to explicitly not reset the permissions, which i guess is why i was getting the errors, and we'll see how long i'm good for with that.