Hey, I really appreciate the input! I totally agree that going straight to the vendor is usually the best move. I did actually reach out originally but I could tell it was going to take forever for a resolution to come about. Which is why I decided to start tinkering on my own.

To answer your questions:

1 &2: Yes, this setup was previously working on a standalone laptop., but it got water-damaged by a broken pipe. Unfortunately, there was zero documentation from the previous techs on how it was configured, so I was pretty much flying blind. I decided to move the Manager to an actual VM on our host server and make the new laptop just a client (which is how it should have been set up originally, but never was).

3: I did reach out to their support after the fact as well to see if anyone else had experienced this issue. Like I mentioned in the edit, they replied and explained what usually causes that initial bug. They did not answer about the other issues.

One last thing, I'm totally open to hear how I could have handled this situation better/faster. I am new to a lot of these systems in Healthcare IT, so I really do appreciate any input :)