"The title screen ignores (A)" is withdrawn. First-divergence across three boots
of the same binary says otherwise.
A slot-(1F) guest thread is spawned BY the press: exactly once per run,
immediately after the keydown, same stack base 70880000-70900000 in both runs
that got one, and never at all in the run that never accepted a press - which
rules out a periodic worker starting around the same time.
prm6, reached the menu: (A) at line 6498, (1F) at 6500, 6 ResolvePath after
opt2, stuck on the title: (A) at line 1287, (1F) at 1288, 0 ResolvePath after
opt, stalled before title: no (A) ever, no (1F) thread at all
In the successful run the loader immediately reads six paths out of the on-disc
cache and the menu appears. In the failed run the same thread starts and performs
no file I/O ever again. Total ResolvePath for the three boots is 90/84/78 - the
successful run's extra six are exactly the ones after the press, so the boots are
otherwise identical in I/O.
Refuted as the cause: the cache-flush std::out_of_range. All four of today's runs
have zero GUEST-THROW, zero CRASH DUMP and zero Access Violation, and the guest
stays alive throughout with its keystroke-poll counter climbing past 15000.
Next probe is neither input nor the crash: what the (1F) thread waits on.
