Yeah, basically that. I’m back at work in Windows land on a Monday morning, and pondering what sadist at Microsoft included these features. It’s not hyperbole to say that the startup repair, and the troubleshooters in settings, have never fixed an issue I’ve encountered with Windows. Not even once. Is this typical?
ETA: I’ve learned from reading the responses that the Windows troubleshooters primarily look for missing or broken drivers, and sometimes fix things just by restarting a service, so they’re useful if you have troublesome hardware.
Folks, Windows’s own system image couldn’t be restored from Windows. I had to go download some program called Macrium Reflect and use the underlying VHD files.
What broke? Oh, you don’t know? It was a bad Windows update that had a broken driver or something causing driver verification to fail.