Restoring Windows 10 image from a backup

I've wasted several hours last night and all of this morning fighting Windows. I figure The Hive can answer this faster than any computer board, so here goes. I have a Windows 10 desktop that has suffered some sort of software issue, so it will no longer boot. It goes straight to the blue screen that says to use the repair tool. The repair tool can't repair the problem, so I decided could just use the other option provided and reload the most recent backup image from the backup drive (an external USB hard drive), since everything you read on the Internet says it's so easy. I only get the option of restoring from an internal drive on the computer, which doesn't have the backup files, or a network source. If I try to get it to look for other sources, like the external hard drive, it asks to install a driver for the source, which there isn't one for the external drive. So, how the hell can I get this thing to see the backup image Windows has been so faithfully saving for my computer every freakin' week?

And, for future reference, where are people storing these backup images that are supposedly so easy for Windows to get to? A partition on the internal hard drive, since that seems to be the only place the restore software can see? That would seem to defeat the purpose of having a backup, since a failure of that drive would take out the backup.

Thanks!

Do you have "last known good configuration" available to you as an option in the start up menu?

No?

What if, after you power on, you immediately start spamming the F8 key?

Try that.

I had that happen to me.

I called my internet provider and we did the whole redo.

Thanks! I finally gave up and just did a complete reload of the OS, and then manually imported all of the files. Fun weekend.