System Restore unending

I had a crash and all I could do was a System Restore from my Back-up.
The restore went through the process of loading files and then went into "Finalizing file restore..." And has been in it for the past 5 hours - looks like a loop to me.
Can you tell me whatI should do? It seems all I can do is a hard turn off my laptop an restart it but I'm very much afraid it will mess up things further.
All I can tell you right now is that I am on Windows 10 and I believe it is the latest version.
Right now, I'm using my I-phone.
Many thanks

If you don't have the Windows 10 installation media, use a working computer and create bootable Windows 10 installation media on a USB flash drive. Should be the same version that is installed on the problem computer.

Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10

Boot the computer from the installation media.

Click Next on the first screen.

On the second (Install) screen, select Repair your computer at the bottom left.

Select Troubleshoot.

Select System Restore.

Many thanks for your prompt reply.
Before doing the restore, I went through the trouble shoot and repair but it could not repair. Also, I don't have another computer and no contacts here in Canada.
Unless you have something else, I guess I'll need to go to a computer shop.
Awaiting your reply.
Thanks

Unico said:

Also, I don't have another computer and no contacts here in Canada.

Find a flash drive that you can format (> or = 8 GB).

See if you can find a public library, local computer store, etc

The Windows 10 iso are free.


https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...load/windows10
Download Windows 10 ISO File
Create Bootable USB Flash Drive to Install Windows 10


List of PC brands with their corresponding hot-keys


Boot to Advanced Startup Options in Windows 10
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/...covery-options
Run Startup Repair in Windows 10
System Restore Windows 10
Reset Windows 10

I was unable to do any of the above so I had to take my laptop to a supposedly good and professional computer shop. After telling me they had to reinstall Windows I asked and paid for them to do a back up of all my files. They did a backup of my user files only. Consequently, they lost all my files in One Drive (14 years of family pictures), they lost all my files in C:Xampp (containing 4 or 5 website files/code), they lost my Excel software and my MS Word software.
I took a backup just about once per month using the MS backup facility in Control Panel. I always thought this backed up all files from my C drive - never had a chance to test it; until now that is. After the shop got my laptop working and finding they had lost my files, I did a restore from my backup only to find out that all it did was restore my user files - which I didn't really need since these had not been lost. Digging into documentation, I found out that I should do a restore from the "Image" backup. I tried that and it didn't do it. It went through the motions but at best it only restored User files.
What am I missing? What kind of backup is MS giving us?
Thanks for your help.

The main drawbacks (for me) with making disk images using Windows built-in backup is that -

1. It uses the same folder WindowsImageBackup every time, so it will overwrite the previous disk image saved in that folder, making it impossible to keep multiple disk images...unless you rename the existing folder.

Example:

You would have to manually rename the folder WindowsImageBackup to something like WindowsImageBackup-TodaysDate BEFORE creating the new image.

So, say if you wanted to restore a disk image from a couple of weeks ago, you would need to rename the current folder to something other than WindowsImageBackup (like WindowsImageBackup-Ignore) and rename the folder WindowsImageBackup-TwoWeeksAgoDate to WindowsImageBackup.

WindowsImageBackup is the only folder name that is recognized.

It's a mess.

2. There is no "byte-for-byte" validation, so there is no way to verify that files on the disk image match those on the drive that was backed up.

3. There is no way to control how the disk image file is compressed on the backup drive. Larger backups mean fewer disk images can be stored.

Many have moved on to using third-party disk imaging tools.

Macrium Reflect Free is a popular choice.

Thanks but the problem is not related to backup 'versions'. I would be elated if MS Recovery would go ahead and recover the last image it finds. The last one on my backup external drive is the last backup I executed which was on Nov 9 and is well identified in the WindowsImageBackup folder. The problem is simply that MS Recovery isn't doing the recovery nor is it giving any error messages or unable to do messages. I will certainly move to a third party facility as soon as I can but that is not going to solve my immediate problem - which is recovery of my files which were lost on Nov. 19 . It would have been nice to know ahead of time that MS Backup doesn't work. I have been uselessly executing a monthly MS Backup every month. I can understand MS products having glitches but to outright not do the job is absolutely ludicrous.
Many thanks for your help OldNavyGuy.