I am talking about wiping the computer and reinstalling everything. But if you want to try a repair install instead then that would be up to you.
No, I wouldn't have given the advice given but I was away that week in July. In some cases I may say to use System Restore but as I said, only a couple days back at most and also in very specific circumstances.
But with all that was done even prior to this it is evident to me that there are/were a lot of corrupted files on there.
A key factor in all of this is not the System Restore but the damage very likely done by this Advanced System Optimizer 3. It was on the system since May. There are so many things this program does, without the user interaction, that it cannot help but cause damage. Everything this program claims to do with "one click", easily be done manually by the user, but much of it is totally unnecessary. You really can't "optimize" the registry for one thing. And it isn't needed but this is one thing this tool does all the time...play with the registry. There is absolutely no way a single tool can possibly know what every registry entry on a computer is for. Every program on a computer has it's own registry entries. A tool like this Advanced System Optimizer 3 only can be set up to look for what are considered "normal" entries. Install a program this thing isn't set up to know about and there begins the problems. It does it's scan, sees new registry entries because you have installed a brand new program or your antivirus program has installed some new protections and the Advanced System Optimizer 3 will say..."whoa, wait a minute, I don't know what this is, it must be bad let's change things back to the way it was after my last scan"...so your new registry entries from your new program or your new anti-virus update are now gone. What happens...the programs won't work correctly and while it was removing those new entries it also "fixes" any other entries in there that may be intertwined with these new necessary for the new program entries. Because it has also fixed those then something else won't work right and it becomes a never ending cycle. This is why you are having these problems really. This thing likely changed so many things in the registry that the likely way to get it working again is take it all back to the beginning.
This is my own personal opinion of course but if it were my computer then that is what I would do.