You should only turn the crank clockwise. It should go all the way around.

Try turning it over by hand with the spark plugs removed and see if it has the same behavior.

still doesn't turn over completely with spark plugs off

Does it come to a hard stop or a soft stop?

What are you turning it with?

Fairly hard stop. Turning with socket and wrench attached to bolt on crank.

If you can't turn it over with the plugs out you have a problem and should check the timing chain first.

I agree. Turning with the plugs out should be easy. Since it has a hard stop, the issue is likely an internal issue, inside the engine.

This does not make sense in the context of the failure steps, but a hard stop with no compression is a hard stop with no compression.

Hello,
What do you mean when you say it does not make sense in the context of failure steps.. The whole thing does not make sense to me..I have maintained the car well and it was working when I parked it after a long trip (at least an hour) and then just died after 2 days of being parked in cold weather. The car has less than 100 000 km.
and there was no indication of any failure before this..It has been a good car thus far.

I have read that the timing chain is a common problem in the 2.4L GM engine (this was only in 1 YouTube video) but usually happens at about double the milage on my car.

Failure steps that I see:
1. It worked well
2. Parked for a couple of days in cold weather
3. Only a click when start is attempted
4. 5.5 year old battery discovered
5. Battery replaced
6. Only a click when start is attempted
7. Can't hand-turn engine an entire revolution, even with plugs removed

The odds of two unrelated things going severely wrong on this car are extremely slim. Just about any car would go through steps 1 through 5 and they'd be on their way. I'm saying like 99.99999% of them, this is how it would go. Then Step 6 gives us same exact behavior? Then Step 7 indicates major internal damage? This combination is unheard of. This is like if my hair got messed up by the breeze, and that caused a heart attack.

This is more reason why the dead battery and the damaged engine don't make sense together. If the car is in generally good shape, or even in marginally bad shape, and the battery was 5.5 years old, then the battery would be the only new problem. Once the battery was replaced, some amount of usage would have to happen before the next problem occurred. In your case, it appears that both happened at the same time on completely unrelated systems. The odds of this are infinitesimal.

At this point I can't rule anything out. At the same time, I haven't heard of a large number of timing chain issues on the LEA 2.4 Ecotec like in your car considering the volume of these engines that have been produced. Either way, back to the failure steps, steps 1, 2, and 3 tell me that this isnn't a timing chain failure. It ran fine when you parked it. Then while everything was sitting completely still and cold it broke in such a way that the starter would do nothing but click? I can't fathom how that would realistically happen.

Be careful looking at YouTube videos that claim things like "The GM 2.4 Ecotec has timing chain problems". There are six different Ecotec 2.4 engines, and YouTubers seem to have a tendency of not distinguishing between them.

While we're here: The 2.4 has had a large number of oil burning issues. Could you check your oil level and report back?

Kind of you to explain everything to me. Oil level was low and I topped up ..No low level oil signal had come up on dash. Although I replaced the battery as it was old, I don't think it was a problem as the car always started first time. Also when I replaced the fuse and tried to start the engine, the fuse to starter burnt.