Thanks again for your feedback. the 3rd Party "packer" software that i use, as i understand it, simply hides my files (which, i expect, is the "hide.bat" referenced above). the exe you're running is that software which goes on to extract my files into a hidden folder and then executes *my* exe while your experience isn't getting to that point.
that said, i pointed a friend to this thread last night and we've been prototyping ideas to obfuscate media which is all i aim to do; i'm trying to be responsible in keeping paid/commercial media from being easily circulated/distributed.
until that's ironed out and i can ditch the 3rd party software, i do have one older jam game that doesn't use it while it does write your best score to disc (if you achieve over 1000): if you would test P3 and advise if it runs properly, i would appreciate it as it would help me know that the 3rd party software is the culprit here, which is my hunch.