dammit.

again.

ugh.

i'm going to break the clock again and see what happens...

it seems like that flattened it out. which is weird. because i thought it was the problem in the first place. and it left it a little jagged - but at least it's not bleeding.

i have an idea...

there's three drivers attached to the system clock in xp. there's the streaming proxy, which i'm nearly absolutely certain was functioning before this mess. there's the microsoft streaming proxy clock, which i'm pretty sure was functioning. and, then there's the microsoft streaming proxy quality manager which i have little to any memory of. i suspect it's the third of these...

when i modified the script, i removed the deletion on all three. so, the issue may have been sitting under my nose the whole time.

i'll have to test. again. ugh. but, it's gotta be it.