I've been doing some experimenting all day today, and have found the following:

The .exe file does infact run at startup time, before the user is logged in just fine.

If I move the install file to the netlogon folder of one of our DCs then it runs every time, as it should

I think that for whatever reason, although I added the group "Domain Computers" to the ACL of the install$ share on the file server, that something is stopping the PCs from communicating w/that file server during startup time. I'm not really sure but I do know that it works from netlogon. So that is what I'm going with. Let me know if you have any more input. Thanks again.

marty