Man, this is just life in a nutshell. You spend forever fighting some huge problem and it turns out to be the dumbest, smallest thing. Like when your wifi keeps dropping and you're ready to buy a new router, then you find out the cord was half unplugged. Or your car makes a scary noise for weeks and it's a water bottle rolling under the seat. We always jump to the worst case and skip right past the simple stuff. Check the dumb thing first, every single time.