So the “fresh” install went off without a hitch! Managed to mount everything correctly during setup and was wow’d to see all my data and settings enact. I did forget to backup my Yast Bootloader settings, however, and now it seems that it’s writing my bootloader for this particular install somewhere that isn’t getting loaded on boot and I must manually select the boot in bios. Not a huge deal and I’m sure I can fix that somehow with the “Boot Code Location” setting. I just don’t want to nuke something I shouldn’t so I’m not touching it for now.
I also forgot my kernel params, which is a bit of an annoyance but I guess I will figure them out as I go along.
Thanks to all who came with my on my frustrated journey but SUSE is so robust I’m back in the saddle without too big of a hiccup!