I'm not familiar with pathing using WAMP.

Looking in the ACP under system-advanced-datastore I see the location listed as C:\wamp\www\ips_037cb/datastore 

Is that last forward slash kosher? I had to backtrack the zend call in php.ini for the ioncube loader when I had the slashes going the wrong way - just want to be sure any other errors I have going on with the upgrade aren't traceable to this.

Yes its normal for Wamp.

Mines listed as:

⁣D:\Wamp\www\400/datastore

I've not had any localhost upgrade issues at all tbh, although the live board appears to have a selection thankfully not that serious.

Yes forward slashes and back slashes both work with WAMP (I use WAMP locally).