going to answer my own question: it looks like I had to open a command prompt while it was booting (shift F10) and then enter the directory /system32/oobe and run msoobe, and configure an admin user (with or without the password does not seem to matter). and just finish stepping through the...
I am truly hoping this is a very fundamental kind of problem. I do not understand why this is happening. I have installed windows 7 on many of these Lenovo G560's. They are standard from the factory. I had JUST setup this one particular laptop myself a couple months ago. Now the customer...