@skidoo - i have absolutely no gripes against anyone here.
In fact, people have always been very polite and the only one who was a twit at times, was me.
My recent experiences with MX have been frustrating and i'm sure it has nothing to do with the distro per se.
Have installed it at least half a dozen times in the past on hard disk without issues (but i have the defect of being a distro hopper).
Long story short.
Video tutorials are a bit outdated.
Still, just now, booting from usb with MX set to persistence via F5 at bottom of screen, set it to "save" etc. then enter.
Was not sure of how to do otherwise than to hit enter to save choices.
It booted into what looked as usual, without requesting username or password which should have been done at some point, so i guess i missed a step somewhere...
Have tried half a dozen times to install directly to hard disk (as i've done so many times before) but installer just does not want to work.
Rufus now has option to do do 3 step security check.
Did MD5 with notepad but not sure on how to open the last two.
Anyhow, i do not have issues installing other distros so, for whatever reason, my Windows 10 no longer likes MX.
In fact, just to be sure there might have been some malware, did a complete fresh install of Win 10.
Now, i now have to connect to ethernet via a special usb connector (regular port is out of order), but that doesn't stop other distros from installing.
I don't want to knock MX for any of this and just want to consider it case closed for now.
Will continue to install MX 32 or 64 on other PCs whenever opportunity comes around.
So, thank you for reading through this post if you have and do appreciate all the help that is generously given here.