I haven't had boot problems for the last week or so . Apparently the last time I reset BIOS and reset the boot sequence it "stuck".
Nevertheless, I bought a new Crucial MX500 SSD and cloned my SanDisk 240GB SSD, then installed the Crucial and removed the SanDisk. I used the recommended Crucial cloning software which is a lite version of Acronis.
I figure I've covered all the bases now and should be good to go.
...and another weird event. When I cloned the 240GB to the 500GB SSD my Microsoft Outlook contacts did not make the transfer. I discovered this yesterday morning when I went to email someone and their name was not in the address book. In fact, there were no names in the address book!
Hassles, hassles, hassles. Time to rebuild the address book.
I run three business email addresses through Outlook, also an old AOL email account and my Google gmail account. So five email accounts. I figured I'd import the gmail account addresses first since it is the smallest. Went to Google Contacts in my Google account on my PC and exported my contact list to a .csv file. Then went to import the file to Outlook but it would not import the .csv file. Kept getting an error message. I'm about an hour into the process and starting to get mad.
I move on to the three business emails accounts. I made .csv backups of the address books back in March 2021. I had edited deadwood out of the files back then so I imported them directly. It worked, no error messages. I will have to manually add any contacts I'd added to the address book(s) since March 2021, but at least I was back in business.
On to import the AOL account address book and a similar success. Back to the gmail account, and back to the error messages--will not import the .csv file. I look at the contents of the file and everything looks normal to me.
AHHH, yes, the famous quote from the TV show IT Crowd: "have you tried turning it off and on again?" Why no, I hadn't. I restarted my computer and this time the import of the .csv file works.
Googling around I found some that people claim the Acronis cloning software deliberately does not transfer over Outlook's contact files. I find that hard to believe, but it's the only explanation I can think of.