So I decided to uninstall not only the last driver, in an attempt to rid my psyche of the demise of my tablet; but also remove the 'bamboo dock' which is home to commonly used shortcuts and custome apps.
After doing this I thought to myself maybe it was the dock that was f^cking things up. And I also thought I should search for my replacement nibs and try that. Well, I couldn't find the nibs, but I did find a usb without a transformer thingy on it (the other 2 usb's I tried were for old cameras and had 'em).
YET AGAIN, installed the freakin' driver and restarted meh blue beauty. plugged this sucker in and it works. I am so relieved. I was r