The Dreaded Day has arrived

Despite request to microsoft support and many posts on their supposed user forums, and tireless searching the net I can not find an acceptable method of restoringing my main desktop computer after its last “upgrade”. I still can not reload some software (eg Photo mechanic, I get a catastrophic error and nothing more to go on), other programs will not write to my C: drive, yet other software just won’t start. I have managed to fix the disappearing folders. they where owned by a very old hotmail address (which I can not every remember using on this new desktop) and it was just a case of creating new top level directories and copying any sudatories in the original folders back into the new folders. Tedious but problem solved so I assume this was an issue caused with Homegroups being dropped from Windows 10.

There are also many warnings (triggered by most software especially On1 photo RAW, Corel Draw and Microsoft Explorer and office programs) that indicated that Windows Defender Security Centre is blocking accesses to certain directories on Drive C:. All the message have the logical name %userprofile% in the reported directory name. So I assume that somehow this had the ownership change or be pointing to the wrong location. I have simply run out of patience to investigate further. This message coming from Defender also suggests it could be related to a virus trying some sort of unauthorized access. However all attempt to scan for viruses and malware come up clean!

My last resort is to do a full RESET to clean up everything and totally rebuild from scratch.

Which of course means, deactivating software (where required) and uninstalling it (if necessary) and a complete backup of all user data. Not to forget disconnected the attached USB extension drive, during the process. By the time I restort my software test it and recreated new recovery media I’m very certain the process (and stress) is going to take way more than one day.

But here goes, wish me luck.