TheDelphiDude

It wasn't catastrophic, but it did make me wonder if they even do regression testing. Own system, and mostly build myself with some help with the CPU cooler.

Is it a fresh install of Windows? Or have you simply moved over the SSD? If so, try uninstalling any drivers left from the Intel based system. If it is a clean install, run Samsung Magician anyway and benchmark the SSD. It's not very likely, but maybe the particular combination of SSD and SATA controller don't play nice together. If you get numbers far below what they should be, it's definitely storage related. If not, something else is the culprit. Either way, I'd recommand installing the latest chipset drivers from AMD as they are more recent than the ones offered by MSI, as well as getting the BIOS update from MSI which was released yesterday and see if that helps.

You can install Windows, set it up the way you want, ensure all your documents are stored on another disk/partition, and use something like Macrium Reflect free edition to make an image. If you need to reinstall next time, you could simply backup your important documents and restore the image. This has the advantage of quickly getting everything back the way it was, but the major disadvantage is all updates, for both Microsoft and third party developers as well as driver updates need to be reinstalled. Of course, once that is done nothing is keeping you from imaging that particular Windows install.

Is Windows itself up to date? The update service shouldn't have such a big impact on a modern system, but it can never hurt to check. Is any other software installed? And does anything start with Windows? You can open task manager, click "more details" if needed, open the startup tab and check if anything is listed as having a large influence on startup. And finally, Samsung has a tool for checking the health of their SSDs called Samsung Magician. Install and run it to check if your SSD is still in good working order.

Other than not pirating software? A clean install. And use another system to make a Windows flash drive or DVD if needed. Unless you want to risk installing from a potentially infected flash drive. Also, offline scanning your harddisks for malware beforehand wouldn't go amiss either.

How fast does your system boot to the Windows desktop? If that's slow as well it's either hardware or a BIOS setting rather than Windows. When installing Windows make sure you've set the boot option to UEFI, SATA controller mode to AHCI, and only connect the boot drive to avoid setup writing a boot partition to the wrong drive. Connect other drives when you're done installing Windows, and make sure the boot order is still set correctly. After that, make sure you have installed the latest chipset drivers, as well as the latest drivers for your SATA controllers. Also update all other drivers, including GPU and audio.

My system has never been bricked, but I was "lucky" enough to get the botched 1809 update. I didn't lose any documents (unlike other unlucky people) but the action center was broken (in the system tray it showed as having x messages, but opening it showed nothing at all), and it took a good 4 months before an update fixed it.

Yes. If it's for a single system I wouldn't bother, but it can be done. However, some driver installers also include control panel applets and such which may not be installed when adding the driver to the Windows install image as they're separate from the actual driver. More information here.

I doubt the microphone is the issue, as others have reported problems with audio after the latest update. Best thing to do is wait for Microsoft to release the (preview) update for october and hope that fixes the problem.

Perhaps for enthusiasts, but for the vast majority of PC/laptop owners? They are either unaware of the various brands and manufacturers on offer or simply don't care.

You can try a 4GB flash drive as long as you select either x86 or x64 bit for the architecture. If go for both you'll need 8GB, but either version will theoretically fit on 4GB. I haven't tried it myself, and the media creation tool may protest when using a 4GB flash drive and insist on 8GB, but it's worth a shot.

I'd recommend not trying to force the update. If you do, it'll most likely end in tears and BSODs. You can however try to update the Intel storage drivers. This may or may not solve your problems, but it's one of the known issues that blocks the update so at the very least you could deal with that in a pre-emptive fashion.

If it's caused by a driver update, you could use the official fix-it tool for hiding updates. Simply roll back the (driver) update, stop the Windows update service and run the tool.

Assuming your mainboard supports harddisks larger than 2TB and you use GPT instead of MBR you should have no problems with a single 16TB partition.

What do you see in the BIOS? Does it show the size or type of the HDD? And what do disk management and/or diskpart show? 465GB is the size I'd expect from a 500GB harddisk (931GB for a 1TB harddisk), so either it's partitioned in a strange way, or it really is a 500GB harddisk. If the harddisk size checks out, I recommend taking out the HDD, make sure the storage controller is set to AHCI mode in the BIOS, and try installing Windows on the SSD again.