Speaking of bad starters, earlier this year, I got stranded outside my ex's house after dropping off our son. Turning the key had no effect. Even using a jump starter did nothing. Had my truck towed to a dealer close to my house where they determined the starter had gone bad. The truck ran fine for several months after that.
But in Jul, same thing happened again at my house. While playing around with it, I happened to unplug the Range AFM Disabler from the OBDII port and the truck started right up! I had been using this Range device for the last several years. I contacted Range Technology (now owned by Holley) and they shipped me a new Disabler and had me return the old one to them. No more issues since then.
Not sure what changed but one thing I noticed was that with my old one, prior to emissions testing, many of the various sensors would report not ready so that would be an automatic fail. I would have to remove the Disabler sometimes for several days before sensors would be ready for emissions testing. After, I would just plug it back in. On this new one, pretty much all the sensors are ready so I would just have to unplug the disabler as I pulled up for emissions testing. I haven't been able to confirm that as I haven't needed the testing but will once it gets done. I actually run a OBDII splitter and have the disabler plugged in as well as an OBDII reader on other. I do this so I can monitor different engine functions and conditions. This is how I can keep track of the sensors.