Whoo Hooo !!!
I did refresh again this morning.
My first stab at running Bioshock Infinite came up with more messages then it did before, all related to DX.
Attempts to open The Elder Scrolls Online and Skyrim also failed.
I was somewhat dispirited at this point, but I opened Steam and tried to run Bioshock Infinite from there.
It came up with a screen that said performing first time setup.
During this process I saw that it was installing DirectX.
I'm happy to report that after this process completed, all of the games started working again.
I've opened all of them several times and they all open up normally, this applies to the non Steam games that wouldn't run as well.
So everything was related to DX but for some reason there was something happening in the Windows install that wouldn't let Steam correct it. The Refresh removed this and let everything get back to normal.
I'm going to reinstall my basic software, i.e. CCleaner, Malwarebytes, etc. and then make a system image with everything working before I do any more, so I don't get into the condition I did yesterday where things quit working and I didn't have a backup.
The Refresh process took 22 minutes from start to finish, but I'd like to see Microsoft add another option.
How about these 3 options.
Repair.
Refresh.
Restore.
The Repair install function available with Windows 7 almost always fixed problems without forcing you to reinstall all of your software, just by restoring all the Windows files and setting while leaving registry entries related to your software.
Anyway I'm happy to report that everything seems to be back to normal.
Mike