Thought I should post a small update:
Been continuing to experiment and slave away trying to get it to install since my last post. Had something new happen this morning though: Windows blue screen crashed with a memory error during the install.
So I ran the Windows memory test and it instantly said there was a hardware fault but not much more than that. Downloaded the PassMark’s MemTest86 and gave that a whirl. Took about an hour to run a single test pass on my memory and came back with 108 errors I believe and failed.
Perhaps I’ve found my issue? I built the computer only a couple years ago and, as I mentioned earlier, I really don’t have any issues with it browsing the web with a billion tabs open, running games, or rendering out videos so… /shrug
The RAM is still under warranty so I put in an RMA with G.Skill and we’ll see how that goes. Hopefully I’ll be able to report back once I get some new sticks and see how the install goes.
If you’re still struggling with this and wouldn’t think it’d be your memory, maybe give the Windows Memory Test a quick pass just to see. Type in search for “mdsched.exe” at the Start menu.