simply disabling the wdm driver produced a stable output, but it was a little flat - it didn't sound right.

the autorun in the registry is running streamci.dll as an executable and carrying out a number of commands related to the wdm and the clock. that makes perfect sense - it's the class installer. but, that seems to be what's screwing it up. and, it's still the clock. and still windows, like i thought at the very start...

streamci.dll was also in my initial delete script, but i took it out a while back because i'd get "missing or corrupt" errors on the first boot after a driver reinstall. i can't date this, but it's not that long ago. april, maybe, even. i can see now why that is. but, in the past, that means the autorun didn't actually execute - because the dll wasn't there.

so, i tried reinstalling the drivers with the streamci.dll deleted and the autoruns removed (i'd just get the error if they were there...) and it seems to be stable.