I went through a good exercise today with the latest ISO ..
I could not get my build system to go from 4.9 to 4.14.. It would boot to the just before the login screen and then just blink blink blink
I have always had a separate area for /home and all critical build areas..
So I installed new and the only thing missing that was absolutely necessary to get back to full build stage levels was the app make.. Once I installed that I was able to install VirtualBox and it compiled successfully to the kernel..
Now all is running perfectly on the latest 4.14 ISO...
So, perhaps the old Stock ISO is over loaded?
The only app missing is Pithos and due to it also demanding the 350 MiB to install the grstreamer files, I can do without it... though I do have it installed on the V-Ger machine, which is my multimedia machine
IMO the latest ISO's are rock solid