OK - so, after 5 hours of reinstalling, moving computers, troubleshooting and dealing w/ unhappy kids, WE FIXED IT!

i'm pretty sure no one else will have this issue ever again, but the least i can do is contribute to the knowledge base.

we're a technology summer camp, and sometimes we use 'NetSupport School' to control the screens of all of our computers to teach our lessons. last week we didn't do this at all. however, over the weekend, we taught a class in which we did. for whatever the reason, this either changed a driver or whatever the heck it did, to give us such a hard time today.

we fixed it by rolling back the drivers to last week before we had controlled all the screens.

i sure hope no one else runs into this issue, but if they do - good luck!

Thanks to ulillillia and Dutchie666 for all the support that they provided along the way.