nospam wrote:

more than likely, it was a significant factor that
caused your bricking.

I checked my records on the old HDD now that it's mounted to Windows, where
it was stable at "Windows 10 Pro Version 1511 OS Build 10586.1106" for
years.

So I was able to do the impossible, for a while, which is stave off the
Windows 10 Pro updates.

I suspect Microsoft never coded the if-then-else to handle jumping from
Windows 10 Pro Version 1511 OS Build 10586.1106 to the 16299 Upgrade from
November 2017 (1709 release).

It's a bug on their part, almost certainly, since I only flipped the
switches that they provided.