...........I looked for previous restore points and found that there were none earlier than 2/2/2014.
Are you sure ?
Have you clicked this to see more restore points ?...............
Yes, I have looked at all possible restore points. There are none before 2/2/2014. Perhaps the event that caused the problem I am having also wiped out the older restore points.
Since I have a current image of C:, I did a restore to 2/2/2014 and the problem was there. I then reinstalled the Image.
I can work around the problem but I really want to find out (if at all possible) what is wrong here.