I got stuck in the past as well. Deleting blockchain so it can be redownloaded from scratch works. Now I making backups of blockchain from time to time so if this happens I dont need to dowload full blockchain again...
Perhaps you missed where I noted that I restored the blockchain from an earlier backup. Unless I needed to include something other than the blocks folder and the chainstate folder.
I'll try an earlier backup - though things were working past the day of the selected backup.