When my wife turned on her computer this morning it opened to a request to sign in to Windows Live Mail 2012 with choices to "sign-in" or "dismiss".  After trying Dismiss and running in circles, I entered her Windows Essentials gmail address, password, and signed in.  That brought up her gmail account with all the messages.  However, we use our gmail accounts only to ensure our pop mail goes to our cell phones (long story, not germane here). 

I tried the same with her pop mail accounts (personal and family) which was successful in bringing up new mail, but all her mail sub-folders including sent, deleted, saved, etc., are not displayed.  I assume they reside somewhere on her PC as we routinely download all messages to the pc (not leaving them on the server), but have no idea how to reinsert them in the Live Mail display for viewing/use.

Contacts are also missing.

I noted when I opened her Internet browser, that it was also no longer "installed".  We use Firefox and I had to recreate it (not download, just open as if for the first time.  No bookmarks, etc.

I tried doing a system restore to an earlier restore point (3/1/17) and received a "fail" message.  I tried again to the only other displayed restore point (2/20/17) and that also failed.  The "fail" message was: 

"Failed to extract the original copy of the directory from the restore point. 

Source:  %ProgramFiles%\WindowsApps

Destination: AppxStaging

An unspecified error occurred during System Restore (0x8007025d)"

Before proceeding further and creating a bigger mess, I am coming to this community for assistance...a wonderful resource on previous occasions.

The applicable computer is a desktop running Windows 10 (since first available) with no problems.

So, to summarize, in Windows Live Mail, she is missing all mail messages, content of mail folders, and contacts.  In Firefox, all settings were missing and there were no bookmarks, etc.

Thanks for any help.