DSkou7

Check your local Craigslist or other classifieds for cheap old GPUs. Or if you have another PC, borrow the GPU and power supply just to get it to boot.

I would imagine this is the drop off point for that trek. The top of Everest is over double the altitude.

So March is just eels?

Did you mean to type seize?

Northern Utah last I checked.

Sounds amazing. Onto the steam wishlist it goes.

Your GPU might be having problems, but the other problems you list sound like either a bad hard drive or a virus / bad windows install.

There are several utility programs you can download that will check your hard drive for failures. I would back up any important files and then run those. If the hard drive is bad, replace it. Either way you will probably want to re-install windows from scratch.

If you read the little summary, the test drive was in north Africa.

AntennaPod is great, free, and has no ads. Pretty sure it's open source too.

VPN

Sounds like you learned a lot. As far as the belt tensioner and not being able to budge it, usually stuff like that is a matter of leverage. You probably just need a breaker bar. Those are basically a longer version of a ratchet and are very useful for tight bolts. Usually they are pretty cheap too.