Great, thanks a lot for that @darael I've now installed 1909 and... so far so good! Although I'm not counting my chickens yet. I want to do more testing before my faith is restored.

I installed offline but obviously need to go online eventually. Does anyone know a definitive way to stop Windows automatically installing updates? I've set feature updates to 365 days now and quality ones to 30. I presume that should keep me on 1909 for the foreseeable future?

 

Brilliant, thanks for that. I'd not heard of Snappy before. I'll dl their offline install and use it find 2 device drivers I'm missing. Then I'll create a system restore.

 

@darael Could I ask a quick question about Snappy. Running it I get 2 yellow driver available selections. Which correlates with the 2 I have missing in my device manager so that's fine. However, each of the driver headings has a drop down arrow, which reveals many different versions of the same driver.

What is the accepted way to go about installing these 2 missing drivers? Should I just tick the main checkbox of each driver (if so which of the drivers does it install?) or should I actually choose a specific driver from each driver menu's dropdown?

 

@darael I downloaded the entire thing, good to know I have a offline copy if necessary. So running the 64bit setup I get this screen.


Ignore the tick by the novoton driver, that's me. I forgot to uncheck it for the photo.

I'm not bothered about updating the other drivers, even though it's saying there re more optimal ones. I'd rather keep things stock for now. The ones marked yellow, I presume are the 2 that I'm missing in my device manager? So them I'd like to get working.

 

@darael Cool. How should I proceed though? Should I just tick each parent box? Or should I click each drivers pulldown and select a specific driver from the list?

 

For instance, clicking the nuvoton pulldown I get all these drivers. Which one gets installed if I simply check the parent field? Or should I select a specific one? And if so which one? I'd presume the first one as all the others aren't signed..

 

@darael Thanks, the 2 missing drivers installed fine.

I think I'm going to call this a wrap. I've been running the system since yesterday and it seems solid. Thanks so much for everyone's help, especially darael.

The issue does indeed seem to have been caused by the 2004 update. What a mess. At one point, prior to the 2004 tip off, I'd had to start familiarising myself with new motherboard/cpu/ram bundles.. Given the severity of the issue I had and from what I've no read about other peoples problems, I find it amazing that Microsoft released it in the first place. I don't know why it was served to me either.

Anyway, lesson learned! Never allow a feature update again without checking the tech news!! Goodness know when I'll do a feature update again. Who knows when (if!?) Microsoft will fix my issue??