Windows 10: System restore is not working...

I am having an issue with my Windows 10 desktop.

Starting from the beginning, whenever, I go out of town, I remove my HDD from my desktop, put it in an external case and hide it. I have done this many times without issue. I went out of town and returned on Tuesday.

Tuesday after work, I put the HDD back into my computer. I copied some files to a flash drive, and I noticed that all the desktop icons briefly disappeared and re-appeared (similar to what happens when explorer.exe crashes). In response, I ran a BitDefender full scan overnight just to check if something was infected – it didn’t find anything as usual. Wednesday, when I tried to start-up the computer, it froze on a black screen sometime between the Windows logo and the login screen. I forcibly restarted it. It booted, but the time was wrong (which I fixed). I ran chkdsk /r and then ran Microsoft Safety Scanner overnight to make sure nothing was wrong.

In the morning (Thursday), the screen would not light up nor would the keyboard or mouse respond. I forcibly restarted it and looked at msert.log. Nothing found but some errors… (See attached). It got stuck on a black screen once, and the time was wrong again. After work (Thursday), I tried system restores from multiple system restore points (including an additional chkdsk /r), they always failed (see attached images). I tried sfc /scannow, but it found no integrity violations. MBAM didn’t find anything in a threat scan either. The first time I booted it up after work, the time was wrong. Each following boot, it was right.

CrystalDiskInfo says the HDD is still fine – I built this desktop in 2014, the only things that have changed since then are the CPU heatsink and overclock (FX 6300 @ 4.5GHz), the amount of RAM (8GB DDR3 to 16GB), and the GPU (GTX 760 2B to GTX 1060 6GB).

What else should I do before going to the nuclear option (i.e., a clean install)? This desktop is on its last few months as my daily driver (looking for an RTX laptop), so I would like to avoid this.

:)

 

Programs not working


In post 26 there were steps listed to fix the operating system corruption.
Are you able to follow them?
In post 29 was the suggested dism repair command.

 

windows xp duel boot with vista restore points

Turn off system restore in XP altogether...or if you dont want to, AsRocks suggestion should work :\

 

System Restore Error 0x81000203

Good day,

We can see here that you are having issues performing system restore on your computer. Having said that, we need to determine the cause of this problem. Before we proceed, may we know the following:

• Any changes made on the computer prior to this concern?
• What troubleshooting steps have you tried so far?
• Are you getting any error messages when trying to perform system restore? If so, can you send us a screenshot?
  Note: Please do not include any personal information.
• Have you performed all the suggested troubleshooting steps found on this thread?