What happened to all of my system restore points ?

I have religiously created system restore points before any event, one as recently as yesterday and many within the last few weeks.
Today, I tried to create a restore point as always and it kept failing, giving an error number and something about "timeout for shadow copy has expired"
I thought maybe a restart might set things to rights; was I ever wrong.
The machine refuses to start.
I put in the system repair disc and attempted to boot from that.
After several fails at that, I decided to restore to a restore point.
When it gave me a list to chose from, there are only two choices, both in October 2016; the machine was new to us in early October with a clean install of W7.
Why do I not have the choice of any of my more recent restore points ?
Another thing that puzzles me is that it is not giving me the option to use the revert to when new whatever it is called; I know it is there because I used it a couple days after we got it when something went haywire.
Not to confuse the issue, but one more question: when it finally gets to a box that offers me two choices, the bottom one being "restore to a system image" and the top choice "use recovery tools", there is nothing showing where it should show the OS; when I click the button "load drivers", it opens an explorer window showing tons of files that I have no idea what I am looking at.
I canceled out of that and clicked "next" at which point it provides the choices "use repair disc", "restore point" etc.
Could the reason that it will not boot from the system repair disk be the absence of anything in that window where it has the load drivers button ?

Please don't assume that I know all the lingo and such and walk me through this.
I would really like to avoid the hassle of reinstalling all those many many programs and drivers.Thanks so much for reading.

Update Update:
In the repair options box, at the bottom were two buttons, "Shut Down" and "Restart", I clicked "restart", and after seemingly forever, it booted and Windows desktop appeared.
Once it all got settled down and looked like it was ready for action, I clicked on a simple program icon and it is responding very sluggishly, with the little blue circle just spinning.
The minute before all of this ordeal began, response was instantaneous.

And, where did all of my restore points go ?

Thanks.

I had to leave the machine for a few hours; just before I left, it had finally booted on it's own without the disk to a screen with the users there to be clicked on and I had to enter a password.
Before all this foolishness, I had everything set such that no password was necessary.
Once I entered a password, it said "creating your desktop".
It was taking forever, so I had to leave it to it's own devices.
When I returned, the entire screen was a textured grey; no task bar, no desk-top icons, nothing.
I pressed the Windows button and a very different style start menu appeared where I clicked "change user"
I was expecting another lengthy wait, but a desktop of sorts appeared immediately.
However, there were no desktop icons and nothing on the task bar.
Then, a notice popped up that said "location is not available. C:\Windows system 32 config system profile desktop refers to a location that is unavailable. etc., etc."
I can X this notice away and everything I do prompts it to return.
Thankfully, all of our many programs seem to still be there.
However, although the libraries heading is still in Explorer, there are no libraries there; clicking on a library heading gets a different notice stating "explorer exe this file does not have a program associated with it etc., etc.
At least everything happens lightening quick instead of creepy crawly slow.
On top of all these problems, the entire display appearance is totally unlike the layout it had before; everything is flat and grey.
I hope I can figure out how to get into the library contents, as I had just recently stored a bunch of digitized VHS tapes and was waiting for a new external hard-drive to back them up on.
For the same reasons, I really don't want to have to use the system image that I stored some time ago.
For what it is worth, while everything at least is responsive, I tried creating another restore point.
Before doing so, I clicked on "restore" and it listed the same two October restores that it showed earlier.
I cancelled out of that and then created another restore point and it actually worked and only took a second.
I then looked in "restore" again and the two October points were gone and the only one listed was the one I had just created.
How am I going to get this thing back to where it was yesterday ?
Are all of my restore points still there and I just don't know how to access them?
I thought times like this were why I had been creating them all along.

Sorry for such lengthy information.

Layback Bear said:

If you would complete my request in post #2 we would be able to see your restore points.

Your original thread as posted.





Jack

When I type "cmd" in the start menu search bar, all I get is "see more results"; clicking that yields a notice that says "Windows cannot find search querry cmd etc., etc."

Is there another way to get the command prompt to come up ?

Thanks for pointing out that really good tutorial on restore points.

I did some poking around and all of my files can be found if not by conventional means; I am uncertain whether it will allow me to copy them onto another drive, but they are all still there.

When I go system properties > system protection, under "available drives" are listed three; Windows C: System ON, Factory Restore OFF, and Windows C: (Missing) ON

What is up with that "(Missing)" ?

Layback Bear said:

Are you using the Administrator account?

Yes, logged on as Admin

When you type in cmd in the Start Orb Search Programs and Files, you should get this cmd.exe.
Right tick on cmd.exe and select Runs as Administrator.


Jack

When I type "cmd" in the start menu search bar, all I get is "see more results"; clicking that yields a notice that says "Windows cannot find search querry cmd etc., etc."

I do not get any cmd.exe to click on, only the words "see more results"

Just in case anyone is wondering, I am carrying on this discussion on a different machine than the one that has gone haywire.

I do appreciate your help; thanks.

For what it's worth, I cannot do a screen-shot from the affected machine; it will not do "save as" -- something about Explorer not being associated somehow; and, if I could save a screenshot, it has lost connection with it's browsers such that it cannot communicate on the internet.

I did look in disk management and all drives say healthy.