Windows 10 PC "Automatic Repair"

You should be able to fix the "repair is pending" message by removing (better yet, just rename it) the pending.xml file that is in \windows\winsxs of the drive you are trying to fix.

DISM /online does its work on the OS from which you booted.  You have to use /offline options to have it work on a different device.

I was able to delete the pending.xml

ran  the sfc /scannow and received a message "windows, resource protection, could not confirm the requested operation"

I then ran it with the additional parameters (as mentioned above) it appears to have run successfully and it found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. I ran a twice for the same results. Restarted the PC again. It made no difference.

not sure, I know how to do the off-line DISM option

I read several related posts here on EE and saw a post between Nobus and McKnife and they were going back and forth with offline DISM options and SFC options. Both knew the commands as well as you know them but it seemed no favorable results. I feel like just once, I need to spend all of the hours to try and resolve these similar issues. I have a lot of hours wrapped up in this.  Most of the time, I end up having to rebuild the OS. 

Many posts state that the DISM is not really helpful if SFC doesn't work

My experience has been different from yours.  If there are no physical problems with the drive, I've had Automatic Repair work successfully many times.  It's all about the root cause.

I've had VERY good luck with DISM /image, but only when I've come up with a proper source (exact same OS Build).  My rough estimate is that my method (new install, check Build, update, check Build, etc.) has given me the right source about 75% of the time.  Other times the correct build gets skipped and I've had to start from scratch.

I've seen plenty of suggestions to just download the ISO for the OS and use that as a source.  I don't know if that has ever worked for me because of the different OS Build numbers.  That number seems to get updated with any significant Windows updates.

I've generally not needed to use DISM if SFC works.  It's when SFC fails that I usually end up using DISM.

If you have a spare SSD (if you are using SATA, you can get a respectable 480G SSD for under $25 US.  If you install from a USB stick, you should be able to get through the installation and sequence of updates to try to find a match within an  hour or two.  I go to that pretty quickly if DISM needs source files.

>>  I've seen plenty of suggestions to just download the ISO for the OS and use that as a source.  I don't know if that has ever worked for me because of the different OS Build numbers.  That number seems to get updated with any significant Windows updates.    <<   when that happens it should help if windows told us the exact number of the OS it wants

I know that the  failed windows 10 operating system is version 22H2 and the bootable windows creation flash drive I created is also version 22H2, but that doesn't guarantee build numbers to match. then it's still not 100%.

Going forward, I'm definitely going to restructure how I support business clients by creating system images periodically.  Better yet, I have over 200 good used  working hard drives I can clone and then use the clone to image a new ss drive if necessary.

that's what iv'e been doing also; but after a while, images also must be refreshed, or you are stuck with a lot of updates and software installs

Nobus:

"when that happens it should help if windows told us the exact number of the OS it wants ": I absolutely agree.  I think it should say: "Image is version x.y, source is version x.z".

When you run dism, it will tell you the version of DISM followed by the Image Version.  That will give you the OS Build version of the image.  That's how I determine what OS Build version I need to create.  On the newly-created one, I use DISM or winver to see what it is.

>>  When you run dism, it will tell you the version of DISM followed by the Image Version.   <<  then we should run the scan health command ( runs fast) to get the correct #  like :  DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /Scanhealth 

and then we can download the correct version, to use with the Restorehealth command

Does this sound correct?  or are there other things to be considered?

"Does this sound correct? ": yes, I think that is correct, with one exception.

"then we can download the correct version": in my experience that's not always possible.  There is a good chance that the live OS has a version different from what you can download.  For example, if it has 21H2 installed, it likely has a newer build number than the 21H2 download because some (many?) updates will increase the build number.  Once could build their own library of different builds, but I suspect that there would be quite a number of them.  It would be much better if MS had a library of all the different ones.

The best would be that Dism autoloaded the correct one  imo