Hi,
That would certainly be an easy fix if that turned out to be the case... Although it wasn't "easy" getting to that point...
It is certainly possible that your video card simply had a bad connection... or it's power connection...
My older monitor flickered a bit, and had some horizontal lines on light colored screens like the Forum or email pages... They would eventually go away once things were good and warm...
I bought a new monitor around Christmas, and all that stuff is gone...
The ISO\Flash Drive stuff is actually fairly easy...
Windows 7 even has a tool to create one for your machine in addition to the RUFUS I mentioned..
Very easy to use... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=56485
My biggest objection is that it installs... The one from RUFUS does not...
I think the problem you had before with the Flash Drive was for two reasons...
You "Extracted" the ISO to the Flash Drive... That does not usually work... I have read where some people claim that is possible, but it worked for me maybe once out of 20-30 tries...
Mostly because the boot files are not correct when done that way...
The second problem may be how the Flash Drive was selected... I bet I went 8 years thinking my Gigabyte motherboard would not boot from a Flash Drive... I thought I had tried every possibility...
Then I stumbled across someone discussing this... There are two ways... Both require using Boot Options at the Gigabyte screen... Start hitting F12 as soon as you see Gigabyte screen...
Select +HDD which opens a menu that has a USB HDD, and select that...
Or even easier... simply select USB HDD at the first screen that comes up after hitting F12...
If you don't need to try this, that is great, but if you do, it's a simple (usually) thing to do...
When you boot with the Flash Drive, you also have access to multiple Repair Functions, and the Command Prompt....
A DVD will work too... Just slower...
BTW... You mentioned System Restore not working as well as before, and I mentioned Acronis...
Acronis is nice to have, but Windows also has a built-in Imaging feature...
It is no longer supported, but works on most machines... especially those using Legacy Bios as ours do... You will need bootable Installation|Repair media to reload an image though...
The Imaging tool will ask if you want to create a CD when it completes, or you can use installation media's Repair feature...
The tool basically takes a snapshot of your OS drive... Then reloads it if you should need it...
You can find it in Control Panel... It's called "Backup and Restore Windows 7"...
You can save the image to most any drive you choose...