all three wmi services are on the reinstall, along with wia. that would have to be it. in fact, the script tries to delete the wbem folder, but it gets an access denied because wmi is running.

i'm not going to rip it out, yet, i'm just going to turn it off and see what happens.

wmi is mostly useful for network admins. it's one of those face-palm microsoft moments, where they integrated driver software into network monitoring software. why, bill? why do you do these things? normal users don't want the network admin aspect of wmi, which is why i originally removed it. like, literally. you do NOT want that shit on your machine. but, it was built in such a way that certain hardware support requires it. it's a strong argument for linux.

....which i haven't moved to, btw, because i can't get drivers.