So it seems that we were close a few times. but finally hit the jackpot.
there were 2 copies of the buildconfiguration.xml.
one was in the \unrealengine\engine\saved\unrealbuildtool folder.
and the other was in the AppData\Roaming\Unreal Engine\UnrealBuildTool folder.
the first one was listed as the correct place in several of the forums.
the second was the one actually affecting the build. it was showing the correct 14.22.27905 but still gave the error message.
simply removing the buildconfiguration.xml from the folder did the trick.
~whew
In my case removing the buildconfiguration.xml from "\AppData\Roaming\Unreal Engine\UnrealBuildTool\" wasn’t working, I had to edit it and make it like this: