TL;DR - DISM, SFC, Windows Update, Trusted Installer, etc were all not functioning for some reason (OS had been on 3 different hardware configurations, one of them was a 12 year old laptop sooo)
Reinstalled windows using a partition on the same drive method, now im trying to merge volumes and deactivate the old install, problem with that is i dont want to merge the partitions incase it merges some of the old OS files (build 18xx vs 20HR) or possibly corrupts something, is AOMEI safe to do this with? i see it recommended everywhere.