huh, cool. ill give that a go.

didnt work :(

With the laptop totally off, try holding ESC while pressing the ON button. This should pull up the Safe Mode options.

tried the usb stick with windows 10 downloaded on it and it’s working so far... fingers crossed this is going to fix it.

I hope you get it working.

seems like every solution comes with a new group of problems
redownloading windows led to my computer shutting down mid download and getting stuck in a repair boot loop

found a solution to that through command prompts however and right at this moment im going through the windows 10 set up... not sure i’m home free yet but it’s looking promising.

and just like that we’re in

thanks for the help plank, this has been an unbelievable pain in the ass considering the age of this computer but i’m just happy it was figured out

No problem. Glad it got sorted.

Question for the tech savy
 

Before moving up here I switched to Verizon cause they have the best coverage in the area. I've been consistently getting 5 bars of 4G LTE coverage which is awesome.

Streaming movies on the phone is great - no buffering.

I set the phone up as a mobile hotspot so I can get internet on my laptop. The phone is less than 2 feet from the PC, yet the internet is often sluggish and trying to stream a movie is painful.

According to the laptops settings it's getting a really strong signal from the phone.

Any ideas?

Try different browser, disabled any VPN, restart laptop, try connecting to another hotspot to see if it's the 4G or the laptop.

My guess would be your laptop is the problem not the 4G.