About a month ago I was having problems with random games missing .DLL files. I can’t think of anywhere I would have gotten a software which modifies DLL files because aside from Curseforge and Nexusmods modding files I haven’t downloaded anything aside from officially sourced apps. I pinned it down to a Hard Drive issue.

After these problems started, I decided to download said dll from dll-files.com which according to Reddit is a trustable source. After placing the dll in the system folder, the problems stopped.

Until only the next day, when I was having SERIOUS lag problems; the PC black screening, software not responding, explorer.exe not responding, and the task bar would freeze up everytime I tried to open something.

Eventually these problems went away on their own, and everything was fine for another 3 weeks; but for some reason I couldn’t update Windows at all within this 3 week time frame.

Then the stupid power cut happened, and every electronic in the house died. and my dumb ass left my PC turned on while I went to help my family sort out the power switches. My mum kept flicking the switches until the worked but when I returned to my PC it was trying to force a Windows uninstall.

I managed to stop it but a few days later, the final blow happened; it wouldn’t goddamn boot! It was stuck on “repairing disk”, “diagnosing your PC”, and “your PC did not start correctly.” Then prompting me to use the recovery environment. I used a recovery media and bam, fixed. Windows updates installed, and all was good.

Everything worked fine; games, documents, browsers, until a week later when it happened again after 3 days of me not using it.

So I replaced the hard drive.

And again, it worked fine for a week, but then I left it for 3 days again, and bam. Same problem. Only this time it wouldn’t even take me to the recovery environment.

Now my big question is: I’m getting a new computer this weekend. Is it safe to move my brand new hard drive and graphics card to that computer, or should I scrap them entirely?

TL;DR: possibly downloaded funky .dll file. Hard drive? Replaced. Windows? Reinstalled. Updates? Reinstalled. Still broken. Is it safe to place old firmware into new PC?