Titanic

Background:

Currently:
a) Outlook is unable to access Outlook.pst (and of course Microsoft resuscitation attempts all failed);
b) Firefox no longer can access any website and to make matters infinitely worse its extension Bookmark search plus 2, under which I had stored thousands of websites, either was gone or ...
c) The Chrome webwindow dedicated to TenForum and ElevenForum which was chock full of very well ordered information--as well as all the other Chrome Windows dedicated to my interests (Music, AI, Medical,...) lost their Bookmarks Bar and all their bookmarks
d) Every time I Restart the computer, which I've done a dozen times, I'm greeted with a message from Windows Defender saying I have serious problems of Low Priority and encouraging me to do something about it. (I finally tried instructing it to Remove the bugger to which WD responded with a Block.
e) and I don't know what else...

So for the time being:
1) I've lost all my email.
2) I've lost all my contacts.
3) I've lost all my bookmarks.
4) I've lost all my Chrome configurations.
5) Firefox is a browser capable of doing nothing.
and I have to clean the house before my wife gets home because we're expecting guests in a couple days.

Currently, I blame RollBack RX which I instructed to leave everything for God**** alone, a task it took up gleefully...a task I had to stop after 45 minutes of RX doing ???...

- - - Updated - - -

Please don't, for the time being, bring up the fact I should have imaged my drive...which if I had..."would never have allowed this to happen".

OK,
Back to you...
1) mmmppphhh : Which piece of mmmppphhh software should I use? Macrium Reflect or Genie Timeline
2) Firefox I didn't know about their SAFE MODE. I have umptienth copies of my bookmarks, and considering I'm talking north of 3,000, how am I to know if a few get lost along the way. BUT
_____a) Exporting Firefox bookmarks only means generating an html file (which is an interesting, and complimentary, way of listing AND finding 3000 bookmarks.
3) WHAT'S IMGUR? When I first saw it I thought it was Discord. Discord is one of those applications I think is crazy (its name describes it perfectly). But, how I don't know, it seems to work for those folk (first time I've felt like a father and this is my crazy kid's generation), and I need it to better understand Obsidian. I do like IMGUR's "We all live in a user submarine".


Back to me...
1) Tried to uninstall Firefox and found out it isn't an application? (if by application you mean something that is installed--and usually need to uninstall.)
_____a) Lo and behold, it came with Bookmark search plus 2 and other extensions that were there!
_____b) And with all the bookmarks that used to be there!!
2) Brought up Chrome, called up its sub windows (Chrome's claim to faim in my opinion) and through Settings was able to call back the bookmarks bar, complete with its, previous folders and their contents

Questions:
i) How can these browsers be corrupted so completely that they're unable to access the web at all, yet similarly that they lose very very similar components (bookmarks, folders, etc.)
ii) How can reinstalling an "empty" browser (presumably such that it completely overwrites its previous incarnation) bring back so many things its predecessor had: extensions, objects (folders); extension references (bookmarks)

JRO said:

Background:

Currently:
a) Outlook is unable to access Outlook.pst (and of course Microsoft resuscitation attempts all failed);
b) Firefox no longer can access any website and to make matters infinitely worse its extension Bookmark search plus 2, under which I had stored thousands of websites, either was gone or ...
c) The Chrome webwindow dedicated to TenForum and ElevenForum which was chock full of very well ordered information--as well as all the other Chrome Windows dedicated to my interests (Music, AI, Medical,...) lost their Bookmarks Bar and all their bookmarks
d) Every time I Restart the computer, which I've done a dozen times, I'm greeted with a message from Windows Defender saying I have serious problems of Low Priority and encouraging me to do something about it. (I finally tried instructing it to Remove the bugger to which WD responded with a Block.
e) and I don't know what else...

So for the time being:
1) I've lost all my email.
2) I've lost all my contacts.
3) I've lost all my bookmarks.
4) I've lost all my Chrome configurations.
5) Firefox is a browser capable of doing nothing.
and I have to clean the house before my wife gets home because we're expecting guests in a couple days.

Currently, I blame RollBack RX which I instructed to leave everything for God**** alone, a task it took up gleefully...a task I had to stop after 45 minutes of RX doing ???...

- - - Updated - - -

Please don't, for the time being, bring up the fact I should have imaged my drive...which if I had..."would never have allowed this to happen".

No panic on the Titanic!
Take a few deep breaths (belly breathing) in through your nose and slowly exhaled through pursed lips. Ooohhhmmmm...
Use the Spock approach, logically be logic, human. (not like Dr. McKoy!)

1. Stop immediately to meddle around trying to resuscitate because typically it can make the situation worse.
2. Is your OS booting normally and running okay?
3. Do you have Internet access?
4. Have you checked your drive and sector integrity? (chkdsk)?
5. Have you run DISM and SFC?
6. Have you run system wide virus/malware scan; online , i.e. trendmicro housecall or locally?
7. Do other applications work or show also weird behavior?

If you can answer the seven preceding questions with an affirmative "yes" leave your machine alone for the moment and try to remember as detailed and sharply as possible what were all the last things you did before that problem appeared.

LMK

1. Stop immediately to meddle around trying to resuscitate because typically it can make the situation worse. Ok
2. Is your OS booting normally and running okay? Yes, since I uninstalled RollBackKRx Home
3. Do you have Internet access? Yes
4. Have you checked your drive and sector integrity? (chkdsk)? See below (BTW is there a way to attach file(s)--not images-- to a post?)


Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems.
No further action is required.

487189208 KB total disk space.
245180588 KB in 710629 files.
429984 KB in 146327 indexes.
0 KB in bad sectors.
1764136 KB in use by the system.
65536 KB occupied by the log file.
239814500 KB available on disk.

4096 bytes in each allocation unit.
121797302 total allocation units on disk.
59953625 allocation units available on disk.
Total duration: 1.63 minutes (97822 ms).

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

5. Have you run DISM and SFC?

C:\WINDOWS\system32>DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.19041.844

Image Version: 10.0.19045.3324

No component store corruption detected.
The operation completed successfully.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

C:\WINDOWS\system32>SFC /scannow

Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them.
For online repairs, details are included in the CBS log file located at
windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For offline
repairs, details are included in the log file provided by the /OFFLOGFILE flag.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>

6. Have you run system wide virus/malware scan; online , i.e. trendmicro housecall or locally?


7. Do other applications work or show also weird behavior? They seem to work though I've not been very active, otherwise.

Windows has scanned the file system and found no problems. (?)
Why is a Windows Security scan soooo much longer than HouseCall (above) which took less than 30 minutes?

No further action is required.

- - - Updated - - -

"ough,oh"

A few minutes after dismissing the Windows Security, suddenly out of the blue...

C:\WINDOWS\system32>DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
Version: 10.0.19041.844

Image Version: 10.0.19045.3324

[==========================100.0%==========================] The restore operation completed successfully.
The operation completed successfully.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>