I moved the contents of the most recent folder under the program files/microsoft/exchange/client access/owa directory to a safe place, for safe keeping, and issued a command to create a junction, with the same name as the directory that I just moved, linking it to the previous version.
to do this, I used the command line command: mklink /J
or something of the sort.
This effectively copied/pasted the contents of the previous version into the "current version"s directory.
OWA works again.
Of course, I checked to make sure the application settings were correct in IIS Manager first...
good luck to all those who many be experiencing this problem
