I know I am a pain in the ass with troubleshooting.
It's not you, it's the internet, it's not quite the best communication system.
I've worked with much, much worse, you wouldn't even crack top 300.
I have created the install image from a functioning laptop this time. So far no problems.
I am carefully installing one item at a time every hour or so, taking note of which and testing if somehow there will be incompatibilityissue.
I did not CRC check. I reinstalled again windows 11 from a thumbdrive imaged created from my laptop. Is it too late to check something?
You could, but I wouldn't.
You made it on a known good system, could it have an error, yes, but it's slim and the odds of it failing the exact same way as before is astronomical.
Alll drivers, at least this time with my second reinstall, has been from the fresh install and clean from the sources.
Good.
Regarding motherboard drivers, I usually just go to the ASROCK websites to get straight from the source. I have the asrock steel legend z490, and so far, I only wish to do that if I run in to problems. Or is that a mistake? If a mistake, which ones should I get?
That's bad.
Z490 is several generations old and if you look at the dates those were posted days after general availability. How much time did they spend on testing and more importantly, what's the odds no newer/better drivers have not dropped after a new OS dropped?
Asrock pulled a "here you go, good luck" then left the chat.
Chipset, I usually just use the built in chipset drivers or a driver utility if the OS is older, I pretty much never use them from a mobo supplier page except to find a missing driver and only a missing driver. They're notoriously out of date.
Audio and network, go to Realtek and get it. Honestly though, again, use the built in. It's sound, rarely effects performance and I doubt it was ever the problem. I pretty much only mess with these if I am using a driver utility.
Video, Nvidia.
I am doing testing every 1-2 hours of use of PC, and I am installing things more slowly, and I will only finalize the PC etc if it runs smoothly for a couple of weeks.
I am writing down which items seems to be functioning every 24 hours in a "install notepad." Then if I install something from old driver or new one, and I get problems, at least I can try and reverse topdown reinstall and/or uninstall ****.
There you go.
In a situation like this you really have to be vigilant, all it takes is one mistake on your part and allow some old, bad data to slip in and the whole house of cards will fall.
If it were me, I'd work in clusters. Do all of the drivers, then something else like games. You're more likely to have an issue again, but you're already narrowed down the problem greatly. It's more work because you may have to keep re-installing, but it's faster.
Also you should make a note in your backups and install files where the problems started.
A year or two from now you don't want to go grab some old info and bring everything down again because you forgot there was a problem with that older data. Or worse, bring it down again but only after corrupting everything again. Meaning you would get to do much of this all over again.
