By the process of elimination, I think that my immediate computer problems may be with my motherboard (EVGA Z97 Classified), and it looks like a BIOS update (version 2.06) only made things worse. Does anyone have any advice on what I might be able to do to correct my motherboard?
Current situation (short story):
I had two hard drives (my original and a second one) that had been reformatted and had Windows 10 installed on them, and two bootable USB flash drives with Windows 10 media creation tools installed on them. Both of the hard drives and USB flash drives have been shown to work on different computers. Using either bootable USB flash drive on my computer to install Windows 10 on either hard drive will result in error 0x8007025d at the "Getting files ready for installation" phase of the installation process, but the percentage at which the error occurs is never consistent. The computer was able to boot Windows 10 from the second hard drive, but only when it was selected from the BIOS menu or the EVGA BIOS Override. After BIOS update 2.06, it's no longer detecting the bootable drive. The computer seems to be playing favorites with the bootable USB flash drives.
Background information (long story):
After a Windows update, my computer wasn't working properly, and after a system restore, it wouldn't start up properly. After retrieving files I wanted to rescue, I tried to perform a clean install of Windows 10 using a bootable flash drive that I had successfully used before, but now every time it would have an error (error 0x8007025d) during the "Getting files ready for installation" phase of the installation process, but the percentage at which the error occurs is never consistent. Eventually the computer stops reading that USB flash drive, so I created a second bootable USB flash drive. The computers reads it, but it's still having the same error as the previous flash drive during installation. Eventually it stops reading that flash drive too. I then plugged a USB splitter into the USB port on my computer and plugged the USBs (not both at once) into the splitter, and the computer was reading them both again. The first USB was only being read on certain USB ports however. I was still getting the same error during installation. I got a second hard drive and removed the hard drive from my computer. Using a different computer, both hard drive were reformatted and had Windows 10 installed on them using the two USB flash drives (without a USB splitter). Both hard drives were able to be booted with Windows 10 on a different computer. Both hard drives were then tested on my computer. Only the second hard drive was able to boot on my computer, but only when selected and prompted to from the BIOS Menu or the EVGA BIOS Override. Thinking that an update to the BIOS would clear up the detection and reading issues, I installed update 2.06 using a different USB flash drive. After the update the bootable hard drive was no longer detected. I could still boot with the second bootable USB flash dive and get to the restoration environment. Since it didn't appear to matter that Windows 10 was already installed on the hard drives, I decided to test the Windows 10 installation process again on the second drive to see if anything had changed. I was still getting error 0x8007025d at the same place with different percentages. Starting up the computer without any input, the computer couldn't find anything to boot from, but from the BIOS menu or the EVGA BIOS Override, no matter what you chose to boot from, the second bootable flash drive would boot as long as it was plugged in. The computer can't seem to decide what it wants to do with the first flash drive. It'll either not read it, or it will read it then stop reading it.