How to clean up corrupted xmp files

I was eventually able to resolve the issue through a super annoying reimport process, though I lost quite a bit of metadata while doing so.

1. Create a collection that has all the images with problems (not smart collection)
2. Remove all photos from lightroom, but JUST REMOVE - DO NOT DELETE from your file system.
   1. Lightroom doesn’t let you remove photos from lightroom in the collection screen if you right click. Instead, you need to go to the ‘photo’ menu bar at the top and hit remove. Why it isn’t in the right click (and tells you in a smart collection that you can’t remove photos from a collection view, who knows!)
3. Synchronize the folder that holds all of your photos you just removed from Lightroom
   1. Check the ‘show import dialog’ box on the popup
4. IMPORTANT: On the rightside panel where you can apply a development preset, set it to “None”
   1. Thanks to this post (https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/can-i-remove-photos-but-keep-development-settings.36832/post-1242726 ) it broke down exactly what this process does and what you will retain/lose: 
      In the process you will lose:
   2. - Collection participation of the images
      - Pick flags
      - Publish Service participation
      - Virtual Copies
      - Develop module history of changes
      - Snapshots
      - Slideshows
      - Saved prints
      - Sometimes Keywords may be re-added at the root of the KW list rather than finding the existing KW in a hierarchy
      - Where keywords are duplicated in your catalog (e.g. you have the Keyword "Red" under both "Cars" and under "Trucks") it may pick the wrong one, pick both or create a new one at the root (I have not done enough experimentation to determine the exact pattern but have seen anomilies in this area)
      
      You will retain
      - Develop module changes (but not history, only final state of slider positions)
      - targeted adjustments (radial filters, gradiant filters, brush strokes)
      - most other metadata (titles, captions, star ratings, copyright, GPS, Location info, etc
5. Wait for Lightroom to re-import.

You will lose the metadata listed above + edit steps, but will at least retain the important stuff required to ‘restore from 0’ if your setup breaks like mine did. There is still no clear error as to why this IO problem happened in the first place, but this can at least resolve the problem

After some more testing, deleting XMP files and trying to force LR to write a new one doesn’t help, so the only way that seems to be able to fix it is by removing the pics completely and reimporting. I do not want to lose my edits/star ratings/keywords for 1800 pictures, so would love any other options I could try to fix this subset of images that is acting up

Just delete those sidecar files using Windows Explorer.