System Restore has been stuck on loading up screen for like 6 hours...what should I do?

[thedonquixotic]

Okay so there's some back story here but basically I messed up my registry fiddling with the right click Context menu and now... explorer.exe is crashing whenever I open folders.

I thought I didn't have a system restore point from before but after doing some stuff I found one from 6/24. So I tried doing a system restore, it ran for a bit, and then started up.... and then gave me an error saying that it couldn't do the system restore.

So then it asked me if I wanted to try and do a system restore with a different system restore point. I only have the 6/24 one so without reverting back to my 6/30 one, I picked the 6/24 point and told it to restore again, and it's basically been stuck at the opening screen saying "restoring registry" with a loading animation for the last 6 hours.... what do I do?

I looked stuff up and everything I found said not to touch it, but everyone I read about had it only going for like 2 hours or something. I don't' want to mess this thing up further, and I guess I can leave this thing on overnight but.... what the heck?

 

[Colif]

Is there any activity lights on PC and are they showing any signs of life?

2 hours is the longest I would expect a system restore to run for, as all it is meant to be doing is replacing system settings. especially on an ssd (I assume this pc in sig), it should be a few minutes at the most.

I don't think its doing anything at all, I would try a restart but not sure what it will do at that point.

You might find windows is still messed up, System restore is what I call last ditch help, as it can mess PC up even more. It becomes less reliable the further back you go as more changes get rolled back.

Do you have a win 10 installer? (if not, on another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB). Its a handy boot drive and might be needed to fix this

Is there anything on C you want to save or is it all on the other 2 drives?

if you find it won't start normally after the restart, I would suggest you think about a clean install.

you can save files by doing this:
change boot order so USB is first, hdd second
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter. this opens notepad
go to file>Open, this opens file explorer, use it to move files you want to keep off C

Once its all backed up,
it might be advisable to d/c other 2 drives while you install win 10
boot from installer
follow this guide: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-windows-10-clean-install.html

when you reach the screen asking for licence, click "I don't have a key" and win 10 will continue to install and reactivate once finished

 

[thedonquixotic]

Is there any activity lights on PC and are they showing any signs of life?

2 hours is the longest I would expect a system restore to run for, as all it is meant to be doing is replacing system settings. especially on an ssd (I assume this pc in sig), it should be a few minutes at the most.

I don't think its doing anything at all, I would try a restart but not sure what it will do at that point.

You might find windows is still messed up, System restore is what I call last ditch help, as it can mess PC up even more. It becomes less reliable the further back you go as more changes get rolled back.

Do you have a win 10 installer? (if not, on another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB). Its a handy boot drive and might be needed to fix this

Is there anything on C you want to save or is it all on the other 2 drives?

if you find it won't start normally after the restart, I would suggest you think about a clean install.

you can save files by doing this:
change boot order so USB is first, hdd second
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter. this opens notepad
go to file>Open, this opens file explorer, use it to move files you want to keep off C

Once its all backed up,
it might be advisable to d/c other 2 drives while you install win 10
boot from installer
follow this guide: http://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-windows-10-clean-install.html

when you reach the screen asking for licence, click "I don't have a key" and win 10 will continue to install and reactivate once finished

I ended up just hard booting it off. Then I tried to do a clean install. Which... fixed explorer crashing all the time but now I have to reinstall all my apps and well... that's like a huge pain in the ass. And even with the change.... well there's still some weird stuff lingering. Some stuff just feels off and while none of my old applications are installed, I can still run some by searching for them from the startmenu. It doesn't feel like a totally clean install.

When Is started the process of reinstalling stuff I noticed that in the root of my C drive was a old.windows folder. So I thought.... ooh that's my previous install.... maybe I'll give it one more try. I go to the advanced restore Windows stuff and when I try to restore previous version... it doesn't work. It tries to do it and then says it can't.

 

[Colif]

That is not right, you shouldn't have a windows.old folder on a clean install, part of process is formatting boot drive. All it should have on it is default windows programs. Clean install requires you to do a custom install - Did you install win 10 over top of itself? as that would explain why apps work still. and maybe the windows.old folder.