That's probably a bad display panel, or a bad connection between the display panel and the logic board. If you don't have AppleCare for the repair to be covered or discounted, then you can take it apart and reseat the display cable. If that doesn't work, you'll likely need to replace the whole display.
Sure looks fine internally. Have you tried the troubleshooting steps on HP’s support site? My gut tells me there might be paper stuck in the duplexer. I’ve had that same model printer and it seemed like it was getting choked with paper constantly.
That model laptop already has two USB 3.1 ports according to HP’s web site, which support Thunderbolt 2 speeds via a dongle, as long as the data is only moving one direction. As far as replacing the USB 2.0 port directly on the system board with a different port, that’s pretty much impossible because the connector from the board to the I/O port is pretty different between USB 2.0 and Thunderbolt 2, and Thunderbolt 2 and 3 also need a controller chip in order to function properly. Also, Thunderbolt runs through PCI lanes and the I/O board is probably not assigned any at all, because USB handles data differently. Thunderbolt in general is kind of a mess, and unfortunately while it’s useful and fast there really isn’t a way to add it to a laptop that doesn’t already have it without replacing the system board and hoping everything still fits.
If I understand you correctly, you want to make generate a backup of both MacOS and Windows to reinstall on a fresh, faster SSD. There are a bunch of ways to do that, but the easiest and least time consuming is probably going to be a Time Machine backup for MacOS, and then use Winclone to back up your Bootcamped Windows partition, so you can then install them both on the newly installed SSD. https://twocanoes.com/products/mac/wincl...
The microphone is the problem here. There are two microphones on the iPhone XR: One is built into the display assembly, and the other is part of the Lightning (charging connector) port assembly. Generally, if a microphone is going to go out it’ll be the one on the bottom near the Lightning port, which is good because it’s a less expensive part to replace, even if it’s more of a pain to do. Occasionally though, as weird as it is, it’s not a defective part so much as Airdrop receiving being turned on causes the microphones to malfunction, so I would try turning that off and restarting the phone first.