Wifi works now!

@abga, sorry I should've noted that I didn't know how to kill network manager, my mistake. I'm not adverse to using CLI, I just happen to be "learning but not quite power-user" with that regard.

After I successfully killed network manager and wpa-supplicant, I managed to successfully run the wpa-supplicant command with no discernible error. The traceroute command, was also successful. in fact, I got internet access! Reinstalling network manager produced no change at all, so at that point, I decided to install wicd. upon following the slackbook instructions, I have successfully got wifi running.

I'm not sure what I can chalk that up to, but either way, thank you guys for your help, and at the very least I have a backup method in case anything goes belly-up otherwise!

@lawnm0wer
Happy to hear you got it working and connected on the Internet.

The "backup method" you learned is actually the standard Linux/Slackware method to connect to WiFi, also documented here:
https://docs.slackware.com/slackbook:wifi
& here (extended):
https://wiki.alienbase.nl/doku.php?i...eless_networks

NetworkManager & wicd are just helpers that use the system utilities.

Due to my lack of experience with NetworkManager I was only focusing on cleaning /etc/NetworkManager/ and missed the fact that NetworkManager also creates a per user sub-folder somewhere in $HOME (/home/your_user/). That $HOME sub-folder might have got corrupted with your hard reset...
https://www.arachnoid.com/linux/NetworkManager/

I don't know what's the NetworkManager status on your system now after installing wicd, but if you didn't uninstall it, then at least disable it with: