CUDA Error
#11
If you want to bruteforce, the command needs to be:
cudaHashcat-plus64.bin -m 1000 -a 3 -o cracked.out ntlmhash.txt ?l?l?l?l?l?l?l?l

That will cover keyspace of 8--all lowercase (aaaaaaaa-zzzzzzzz). Adjust for however long a keyspace you want to try.

Your previous commands only had "?1?1?1?1" and "a" repectively in the dictionary which hashcat happily appended the character mask you specified afterward.
#12
Excellent! That worked. Caveat is I need to recursively increase the keyspace if I want to bruteforce from 1-10 characters.

Thanks for all the help everyone.