A weird BSOD was a real screen of death. After I rebooted, or tried to, the laptop was indeed (mostly) dead. Just the manufacturers logo 
After some diagnostics I found I got the BIOS diagnostics to load if I took the first (boot) SSD out. Iāve fitted a replacement but now have the fun job of restoring a working system.
All of which is a long way to say that Iām a bit distracted and have less net access than normal so I might take longer to respond to anything that needs my input.
Iāll probably get my backup Linux laptop up and running, although that needs lots of updates applying because itās not been used for about 18 months.
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Oh dear, not nice when that happens.
When I was working, the IT departments answer to every problem was to restore the corporate Windows image. No chance, the reimage takes 20 minutes, reinstalling all the apps, reconfiguring them, getting your preferences right, and restoring data took another 2 weeks off and on. We were admin power users and had tons of software installed to work with different customers. The corporate backups only covered the basic data (like the Documents folder etc), and because of the nature of some of the work we could not perform our own local āinsecureā backups.
Iāve made some progress, but not as much as Iād have hoped.
The underlying issue was a dead SSD. I took it out and fitted a new one and the laptop allowed me into the BIOS and recognised the new SSD. There was still fun to be had though!
I put the latest Windows 11 ISO onto a memory stick and booted from it, only for no drives to be recognised and a request to add a driver to allow the storage to be accessed. Iād installed Windows 11 onto the laptop previously without getting that error so I guess itās something related to changes in more recent versions of Windows?
After much research I didnāt find the drivers, although the installer didnāt give me any clues about what I should be looking for. Then I followed the track of using Ventoy (a multi-ISO on a memory stick app) to install. Others had success with this route. Installing Ventoy onto the stick was the easy bit. Getting the ISO onto the stick afterwards was more tricky because I couldnāt find instructions on where it should go. Eventually I found the right place - I put the Ventoy stick into the laptop and was able to boot the ISO without any missing driver messages.
I now have the laptop with a base build on it and have to decide how much more I want to restore.
Iāve been through that process too. Back in the days of Windows NT my site/division was part of a much bigger corporate. We were about 10% of the total company with one other division being about 80%. The 80%ers got to migrate to WInNT before we did so they built an image for everyone else to use. In the early days it was OK, but as time went on it grew into a monolith that included every driver for every bit of hardware that weād used since WinNt was a thing. It took ages to install because once the base OS was installed an attempt was made to install every single driver just in case it was needed. The build process took 3-4 hours, if you were lucky!
Luckily, we left the corporate in 2010 and had the opportunity to change out source contractors. When it came time to create our own Win10 build the new guys did it the right way using the MS toolset. A base build including all necessary drivers took about 20 minutes to install and the system was set up to install the vast majority of end user software automagically after the base build was finished. For most people a rebuild was about 2 hours (or less) which was a huge improvement.
Unfortunately, my laptop build doesnāt use any clever tools so Iām left with manual installs of whatever I need.
oh yes my laptop only starts with the fn button pressed (after pressing the on/off button x times) and then works ānormallyā. releasing the fn button means ending windows. now new laptop but still have to install. ooops
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Do you not get SMART warnings of an impending SSD failure? I got one with my data/backup HDD that enabled me to replace it with an SSD. . . just awaiting the inevitable with my boot HDD 
I also run Speccy (fairly) regularly.
Iām assuming it was some kind of catastrophic failure. SMART type errors are usually gradual, but this was working one minute and completely dead the next. With average use (which is pretty much my laptop) an SSD should last 5-10 years. This SSD was fitted to the laptop from new, so is 2.5 to 3 years old.
So probably something went pop rather than the cells becoming āworn outā.
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Iām fairly sure my new laptop will be arriving tomorrowā¦itās on next day delivery and the courier have provided info that theyāre picking it up today.
The next bit of āfunā will be downloading, installing and configuring the 100+ applications that I seem to need to live my modern life!
The Eagle has landed, or perhaps The Beast has landed would be better!
Itās very nice and the screen is amazing. 3840*2400 pixels on an 18" display. Itās MicroLED based. The screen is very readable and nice and bright. The resolution is so high that it needs scaling to 200% to make things big enough to see LOL
Iām busy downloading and re-installing apps now.
So what made you buy a new one?
A slightly unusual reason - I wanted to use some Bitcoin before it got dragged lower by the actions of someone who shall remain namless and there arenāt many places that you can spend it. Luckily there is a computer supplier who accepts it. In real terms the laptop didnāt cost me very much.
Oh, and teenage complaints about the previous hand-me-down were reaching a crescendo so there was an exit route from my previous laptop.
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Worked the other way here: I got my daughterās hand-me-up