Hi, sorry for the delay, and I appreciate everyone replying! I fixed it, there was in fact an SSD installed, little bastard was hiding under the graphics card which was the only thing I didn't take out when trying to trouble shoot until now. Thing wasn't on any of the specs I saw around online and for some reason Acer took down the manual that actually showed a motherboard diagram that I used last time (to put in the drive im now currently using) and replaced it with a generic one, so there was absolutely no way I would have found that on my own, thank you Tech Deals on youtube! Anyways everything's working great now! Live loaders all work just fine, and booting up is way faster too! Windows also isn't being a weird janky mess anymore too, so it really was just that one SSD fucking everything up I guess.
Anyways thanks you all for your help! Really appreciate you all replying, helped me stay somewhat sane through the frustration lmao. I'm running the solus installer now, and it's seeming to work fine! Will pop back in if something different breaks but the original problem is resolved, thank you all for your help again and I'm sure I'll see you all around on the forum again at some point!
Off topic question, but there's nothing I can do with the broken SSD right? At this point I kinda want to buy a bunch of safety gear and take a hammer to the thing after dealing with all that lol
