Well....I missed something in the boot menu the first time around, and I selected Repair Windows (or something like that)...So it loaded into a screen with a bluish-vista-y background and it wants me to select from: Admin, Guest, or "my friend's name". THERE IS NO PASSWORD REQUIRED to log on normally, yet it's asking for a password for each of the three choices. Any ideas? Leaving it blank doesn't work either...
I'm getting really sick of this! Hopefully I'll just end up reinstalling...what a PITA.
BTW: I'm still baffled as to why booting in to safe mode still results in it trying to update....hmm.