Hi everyone,
It appears something is wrong here, it looks as if my winbox session is somehow locked down, but I still have full terminal access and am using the full permissions admin account after a reset configuration.

this is a newly upgraded 7.1.5 mipsbe on hAP ac as you can see in the screenshot. any ideas?

One thing could be "skin", a feature that allows to limit UI. I never used it myself. Check /user/group/print if you see anything there. But nothing should get there by accident, so it's probably not that. More likely something went wrong somewhere else. Cleaning %APPDATA%\Mikrotik\Winbox\ could perhaps help, but be careful, WinBox also stores saved sessions there, remove only subdirectories named as RouterOS versions (e.g. 7.1.5-409670462).

i downgraded to 6.49.5 and everything came back so im pretty sure its nothing to do with skins

Ohhhhhhh... You are so sicure...

You solved, for you, this topic is [SOLVED]

I have no idea what you're referring to. This is obviously not solved. This looks like an unexplained bug that appears the only fix for is downgrading.

The fix for you is already provided (partially) on post #2, and you do not try.

alright im not calling it a fix until I confirmed it works, so now im trying this again. give me a few minutes to break this other rb962 on my bench and ill report back after i do what the other user suggested

If you cut your finger with a knige you say "the knife have a bug", or better "I do not know how properly use a knife"?

paste this on terminal and share the result:
nevermind the RouterOS version.

If a file called
skins/default.json
or
flash/skins/default.json
or simialr is present,

just delete that file:

From 7.x.x version, (I do not remember exactly from what version) skin is applied not only on webfig but also on winbox
If someone (you) has played before with webfig skin, now winbox apply the results, until you do not delete the file or re-edit the skin on webfig....