Start Menu - Win Explorer ? ? ?

I haven’t done any Win updates since 4-28, and late last night I started to download Forza 6 beta from Ms store, but saw it was going to take forever, so I went to bed. Somewhere in the night it finished and installed on its own (didn’t like that). PC was running when I got up, (Windows almost always fails to put it to sleep), in the afternoon I used FF browser to add some files to Plex TV, all was well. A little I went to do something, and folder I had open had the blue boarder at the top flashing, then I tried to type in the search box of my browser, and noticed it doing the same thing.
I then tried to pen windows start menu, but it wouldn’t do anything, nor would the Win key on my KB.
Just did a restart, did nothing, no access to Windows start, and Explorer is even worse. Blue boarder flashing on and off, can't move, open folder anywhere, any new folder opens right on top of old folder. Time for a cold boot, and that don't work, into safe mode.
Booted to Safe Mode, Windows Explorer issue gone, but when I opened the start menu it opened, but then froze, and up popped Ms error box saying “application not responding, option to End the Process”. Ending the process closed the frozen start menu. I also notice Cortana (have no use for it) would not run either.
I can get settings/control panel to open via backdoor, access anything in it, but when Win Updates is accessed, it immediately closes.
New user account fixed the flashing on and off with apps, but windows start still won't open.
From Admin command prompt ran “sfc /scannow”, and of course it came back with the usual Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some (or all) of them.
Ran DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth, didn’t work, also ran “Dism /Image:C:\offline /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:c:\test\mount\windows”, but it didn’t work either.
If anyone has any other ideas, please come forth. I do have an Acronis BU image, but I rather not use it if I don’t have to, especially since Ms, buried the install files for the 18GB Forza beta somewhere I can’t seem to locate, and I will lose the files, and its install.

Tried to run repair from Win disc, did not work, and using a restore point did not work either.
None of the default windows apps will run. I ran command to reinstall apps, but no change.

Things can easily go wrong in that time for all manner of reasons. 2 months can seem a long time when things go wrong with Win 10.

Your easiest route would be to use your TI image, if you're sure that your PC was running ok when you created the image.

If your PC will run well enough then install Everything by Void Tools which does a fast index of your drives and will help you locate your download. Should be easy to find too as you know how big it is and the date downloaded. Else use a boot disk (see the one here at the top of 'Software and Apps').

So if your only constraint on using your image is the download, do that.

If restoring your image works, then I'd do some routine checks as well, thinking 'what led to things going wrong'.
chkdsk, SFC /scannow.

I may have missed something in your long description.