Hi again
The new user trick helps when it's a corrupted profile at fault. Looks like we didn't get lucky for that quick fix....
It's nice to hear that at least you had some restore points to try, a lot of machines are being sold with System Restore turned off. So long as it's space usage is limited to a reasonable size (I don't see any need for any PC to need more than 5 to 10 GB of space of restore points.... that amount should cover a whopping large amount of time) ... System Restore is a very handy thing to have going.
I know you don't want to try the reset angle yet (and understandably so) ... but if you have the latest build of Windows 10 in (not an Insider build, but the public build... ["Version 1511 (OS Build 10586.218"] ... as in the screen-shot below) you can try an in-place reinstall of Windows 10 that would keep your installed programs (and all your personal data) still intact. The easiest way is to use the Media Creation Tool & make a DVD to install from.
Here's a screen-shot of the latest Windows 10 build:
Here are instructions on how to make a Windows 10 DVD using the Media Creation Tool:
Create a bootable Windows 10 DVD
Go to the Microsoft Windows 10 website:
Windows 10
1) Once on the Windows 10 site, scroll down to the section "
Need to create a USB, DVD, or ISO?"
2) Click on the blue option button "
Download tool now"
Once the download is complete, double-click
MediaCreationTool.exe
3) "Getting things ready" will appear for a bit.
4) Agree to the License Terms by clicking on
Accept
5) "Getting a few things ready" will appear.
6) On the following screen, select "
Create installation media for another PC".
7) And click
Next.
8) Select your preferences:
language, Windows 10 version, bit-depth (the defaults are English, Windows 10, 64-bit)
9) Select
ISO file.
If the iso is created on a computer already running Windows 10, simply put a blank DVD in the optical drive, right-click the .iso file you created & select "burn disk image". Otherwise use a DVD burning capable program (Roxio, Nero, Sonic, CyberLink, etc.) to create the bootable DVD -- look for a "burn image" option. You must use that special command, because simply copying the file to a DVD doesn't make the DVD bootable, it must be written as a system image (otherwise it ends up as a normal storage DVD that happens to have an .iso file on it).
Instructions for an In-place Repair Re-install of Windows 10
The good folks over at tenforums.com were nice enough to provide full instructions, with screen-shots of most every step. As I mentioned before, I prefer the method that uses a DVD to install, but you'll see that there are other options as well:
Repair Install Windows 10 with an In-place Upgrade - Windows 10 Forums
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We could actually fuss with trying to use the DISM tool to repair your system image, but if you are one of the lucky ones for which a repair install completely solves many issues at once .... I like its chances. Besides, we can still try the other methods if the repair install doesn't help.
We'll hope for the best.