DRO's etc not changing. no inputs work

ok, so im new to all this, soooo...

my issue seems to be that no matter what field i click on (feed rate, x DRO, blah blah) after clicking enter it resets to zero.

went thru the manual.no info.

installed it properly, with the reboot and all that.

uninstalled it yesterday, reinstalled...never got the reboot notification.

uninstalled again, deleted every shred of mach3 related folders, re downloaded the installer, reinstalled....

still the same. no prompt to reboot... enter mach 3, still find DRO's wont change, open the "jog" tab... nothing happens. labels highlite, thats it...

iunno...i dont think thats normal, is it?

oh, and what else?

i enter a random gcode, like....um....g1 x0 y10. load it. run cycle. it seems to happen instantaneously. estimated time doesnt change. improve on it by attempting to make a square cycle, ie x0 y0/x0 y10/x10 y10/x10 y0/ x0 y0.... the entire cycle is instant. go to single step mode, ill get a line appear on the screen for each line of code, but once again, nothing else is changing! every damn 0.000000 stays at 0.0000000000000000000 and its sorta annoying...

windows xp, 32 bit, yarda yarda...

is it just me with my usual bad luck on anything i attempt, or am i just not clicking something i should be?