.....
This seems to indicate that the firmware has a stake in the problem ...
> Both the Thinkpad E14 Gen 5s had the same specifications and type number,
> differing only in that the one with corruption of the installer has 24GB of
> memory (16GB installed in the slot, 8GB soldered) and the other only has 8GB
> soldered. They both have the same BIOS version, R2AET32W(1.07).
... but the trigger would have to be very subtle.
> This seems to be really interesting because the corruption only happened on
> certain computers, and it would stay that way on repeated attempts.
FWIW check the BIOS L[123] cache settings and consider changing them to more conservative "slower" values if possible. And you have different RAM models and configurations, could there be one DIMM in the mix that is running overclocked?
Have a nice day :)
Thomas
Grüß Gott :-)