I’d be willing to “upgrade” to W11 as an absolute last LAST resort. Perhaps I’d sooner do that than reinstall W10, but I’m very, VERY much not a fan of opening myself up to that god-awful piece of spyware. If there’s any way I can make it light on resources and private without sacrificing features or ease-of-use, or modify it to be more in line with the Windows 7/Windows 10 experience I’m used to, I might consider it.

I did. Memtest86 confirmed it. Thousands of errors.

I really don’t want to deal with reinstalling Windows again, though. That was an absolute ordeal before, and I’d sooner eat the lack of security than do that again. I don’t have any decent way to back up all my configuration for all of my programs, even if I keep my files, and some of that is very specific and a major pain in the ass to get right all over again.

Besides, if there is some corruption, that may extend to my files, which could mean that an OS reinstall is fruitless as a solution, because once I restore my files, whatever’s bugging my OS out will return with my files. Are there any non-nuclear options for troubleshooting I could try?