Restore - won't work despite no AntiVirus

Hello mate now Lavasoft is rather old hat stuff and the MBAM you can uninstall both and try again. I don't think the firewall has anything to do with this and it might be an idea after removing those scanners (the MBAM you can reinstall later it usually is ok except with Kaspersky) to run these
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1538-sfc-scannow-command-system-file-checker.html
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/433-disk-check.html < if necessary include the /f and /r in the command line as per Option2

Just for the record MSE is now Windows Defender:)

The only thing that I might add is that you could try booting in Safe Mode With Command Prompt then running the following command:

%systemroot%\system32\restore\rstrui.exe

Thx to both of you ... appreciate yr imput.

Odd result: uninstalled Malwarebytes and ran Restore again but still won't work.
Ran the chk disk, scannow and the .exe Callender suggested but all I get it a v. brief flash of the MS window, too brief to see let along read so not sure if anything actually happened.
I suspect the syntax of these commands is critical (a space e.g.) but the ones from the forum tutorials ought to have worked.

I'll wait and see if the ad. pop up I encountered shows up again. It appears gone but who knows, maybe it's lurking somewhere in Sys.32

Sorry - should have been:

%systemroot%\system32\restore

or

C:\Windows\System32\rstrui.exe

or just type rstrui.exe

Sorry to take so long to get back to you .... I was actually away and now just back with the computer.

Yes, the revised syntax seemed to do the trick so thanks to you both for your imput!

That's good mate and if you want a little more out of the machine take a look at this
Optimize Windows 7

Just as precaution though even though the instructions that Brink posts are ok in case you might hit a wrong key then do this first - I always do this straight after a clean install a matter of habit and good practice
Registry - Backup and Restore