dammit, i got it. finally. and then it disappeared.

it's hard to know what is exactly the right set up, because i'm dealing with relatively subtle shifts. there's been a few times where's it's not been clear. but, when it is clear, it's crystal clear.

i broke everything, to the point that i had to install the m-audio card to get the audio subsystem back up. i then restarted the computer with the plug and play service disabled, then turned it on when the computer came up. there was about four minutes of beautiful clarity. and, then something turned on and it clicked back out.

i didn't have process explorer open. when i tried to recreate the scenario, i couldn't. which suggests to me that whatever it was that clicked in wrote something to the registry, and i'll have to rebreak it again to get back to where it was.

i think that points to the wmi as the most likely culprit.

i'm still testing. but that's the closest i've been yet. something is loading on startup in windows that's doing this.

i'm testing on a system that doesn't have my script implemented because i want to isolate what the fuck. but it may be the case that such a process would have a different result on a fully installed system because whatever's clicking in may not be able to reinstall itself.

again: i vaguely remember playing with this before.

actually, you know what i can do is turn the boot log on and isolate one by one...