Using System Image to get to earlier System Restore.

Hello for the past 4 days i have had an issue where my computer just fails to boot without going through some ritual (after it lets me log on it works 100% fine till i shut it off again). I believe this was caused by some driver update that went wrong but i have done so much since then that i cant pinpoint it anymore.

So i want to do a system restore to the 9th of December. just going to system restore only has the 11th saved. but i did create a system image on a external hard drive on the 10th. would it be possible to load the system image then look for the system restore on that image for the 9th? is this possible? my other alternative is a factory reset at this point.