Update —
I was able to recover the data trapped on the laptop hard drive, but the sudden shutdowns are still occurring even using a different OS.
I did find a small copper tubular piece , that appeared to be snapped off from some indeterminable source, that was under one of the RAM sticks. There is obviously something broken somewhere and I’m now assuming that is the main cause of the shutdowns.
I’m giving up on a solution seeing how I’ve already replaced the thermal paste, hdd, and battery pack and still have a bad PC. I’m hesitant to add to the cost of this failed repair to order RAM and test it out only find that it didn’t help either.
I thank you all for all the guidance in this process, I’ve learned a lot thanks to you.
Happy New Year!
p.s. - I was able to recover the photos from the hdd trapped in the bad laptop by using a transfer cable and mounting it to the working desktop.