Originally Posted by
bocastephen
I ended up taking the old laptop to a local repair shop and paying them $50 to strip the hard drive clean and put a fresh copy of Windows 10 on it - was worth dropping the entire hassle.
Thanks for the update. But still curious to know if it'd still work (in case anyone else encounters this). Might be worth it for me to pick up a "current" macOS system just to try it...
Glad it got resolved.