Solved!
this was in the connection string portion of my web.config file:
<remove name="LocalSqlServer"/>
<add name="LocalSqlServer" connectionString="connStr" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />
out of desperation i changed it to this:
<remove name="LocalSqlServer"/>
<add name="LocalSqlServer" connectionString="Server=[serverip]; Database=db; User Id=user; Password=pass; Initial Catalog=db" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/>
problem solved, god only knows why.