Lightroom publish to hard drive - virtual AND master losing all development changes upon export

Question

LR 4.3, 59th reinstall (i lost count), standard HP pc setup, triple-core.
workflow:
i develop the master to the point where i want to diverge, then create a virtual copy, finish developing and publish to hard drive. Have done this a million times, but since most recent reinstall (for a plethora of reasons, but mostly difficulties with performance and performance - and oh! performance... ;-), it publishes only the undeveloped original. I've tried publishing the master, just to see what happens, and ditto: only the unedited raw file is displaying in my published folder on the hard-drive.
i am careful to select 'Show PUBLISHED folder on hard-drive' from the right-click drop-down on the published image in the hard-drive publishing module, which in lightroom DOES reflect all changes, but the image on the hard-drive is the original raw file, renamed to the publish-service's specs.
any ideas? i'm fresh out... MUCH appreciated. Having to do an extra export into ps6 (which does reflect changes), and re-save for no other reason than to preserve development is time-consuming and destructive to my workflow, which is darned complicated enough as it is!
thank you!

Answer 1

Could you explain why you have selected "original" as the format, rather than some form of processed file such as TIFF or JPG? In other words, for what purpose are you making duplicates of your Raw files when Publishing? If that is not what you wanted to do, then you are Publishing the wrong type of file.
Exporting "as original" when the LR image concerned is a virtual copy, would be expected to have the same outcome as when the LR image is a master copy, since both versions have the same kind of original - literally share the same physical original - and that would be accordingly Published out as a new copy, when "original" is your file type. Then LR metadata would be written as a sidecar (.xmp) file next to that (or embedded in that, for say a DNG or JPG).
Also, what means are you using to view the exported Raw files in the Published folder? Unless this is Adobe .xmp compatible software - which means: Bridge/ACR, or else importing into a LR Catalog -  it will fail to interpret the LR edits since these will mean nothing to that program. If, for example, this is Raw support built into the operating system's file browser, then what you are seeing is the original camera-embedded JPG preview - which your work within LR has simply left alone.