Well I'll be damned.

[thecomputerguy]

Client contacted me in a panic on a Saturday, and against my better judgment I decided to help. Two computers, both down at home. Main desktop looks like a failed NVme SSD, no boot, tried to boot to NIC. Laptop everything is crashing. We write off the desktop and agree to replace it. I told him I would try to get the laptop operational to get him by until I could replace his desktop.

I login to the laptop and as expected, nothing is working, it boots but Chrome Crashes, Outlook Crashes, Desktop has no Icons, can't right click on desktop. Run explorer.exe does nothing. I fiddle around a little bit and immediately think, this is acting like a full HD.

Sure enough this laptop has 0% free space. I clear out like 40GB's of unused data from old profiles and after reboot I expect everything to be happy.

But it's not.

Chrome works but still, no desktop icons, no right click on the desktop, Outlook still stuck.

On a whim I decide to give a tool I had basically stopped using since it has never worked for me in the past, and since it was a Saturday I decided to throw the hail mary at it... and it worked!

SFC /SCANNOW

I'm stunned. Icons are back, right click works fine, Outlook works fine.

Who would have thought. I stopped using SFC /SCANNOW years ago because I can't even remember that last time it actually did anything.

So, I guess it still can. Give it a shot next time y'all!

My thanks for this? 1 hour of labor and a call bright at early at 830am on Monday "When's my new computer going to be ready?"

Chill bro.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

35 years...that's probably worked once for me too, about equal to "last known good configuration"..well, maybe I've seen that one work around 3 or 4 times in 35 years.

 

[GTP]

SFC /SCANNOW
Worked more times than I can count!
Of course it's not the "magic pill" but 90% of the time it gets things moving.

 

[frase]

It is a "well fk me" moment, though has worked for me sometimes as well.

 

[brandonkick]

I never had SFC / SCANNOW do anything for me.

Though I did actually have "Last Known Good Configuration" bail me out a handful of times.

 

[sapphirescales]

sfc /scannow works great but you have to do a DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth before you run sfc /scannow because sfc /scannow assumes that the Windows image is working fine with no corruption or issues, and it rarely is if there's an actual problem.

 

[frase]

sfc /scannow works great but you have to do a DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth before you run sfc /scannow because sfc /scannow assumes that the Windows image is working fine with no corruption or issues, and it rarely is if there's an actual problem.

That is because one cannot repair from a damaged image, so DISM checks if image is clean etc..
Then one runs SFC /Scannow to actually repair the issue.

I ran one of the tools on WRT "Profile Fixer" or whatever it was called and actually repaired a broken profile. Had the usual search bar not working and other profile glitches, I'm a Wizard 'arry!

 

[HCHTech]

sfc /scannow works great but you have to do a DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth before you run sfc /scannow because sfc /scannow assumes that the Windows image is working fine with no corruption or issues, and it rarely is if there's an actual problem.

and....you should run DISM against a freshly-downloaded-and-mounted Windows ISO (of the same version as your installed OS) :

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth /source:e:\sources\install.esd /limitaccess

 

[britechguy]

@HCHTech,

I believe you're saying to use a freshly-downloaded-and-mounted Windows ISO for the same version you're attempting to repair as the data source for what DISM pulls repair materials from. Would that be correct?

That's how I read the /source switch and where e:\sources\install.esd is the path to the mounted ISO's install.esd.

 

[HCHTech]

Would that be correct?

Yes, that's it. We've been keeping the ISOs for the various releases on our server for this purpose, that way we only have to download them once.