Most of the time after installing or Uninstalling new software applications, Installing recent updates, or some other reason some of the Windows system files get corrupted. This creates a hole inside the OS and leads to a mess at the end. This system file corruption causes different problems such as Blue Screen errors, Startup Errors, Different error codes, etc to Windows computers. And to deal with such situations Windows 10, 8.1, or 7 has SFC Utility (system file checker Tool) that automatically detects and restores missing corrupted system files with the correct one.
Here in this post, we know more about the system file checker utility and how to use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files on Windows 10, 8.1, and 7.
System File Checker
The System File Checker or sfc.exe is a utility in Microsoft Windows located in C:\Windows\System32 folder. Running system file checker utility automatically scans and detects missing corrupted system files, and if possible the SFC utility automatically restores them with the correct one from a compressed folder located %WinDir%System32\dllcache.
Well with the latest windows 10 SFC Utility is integrated with Windows Resource Protection, which protects registry keys and folders as well as critical system files. So That while running This tool if any changes are detected to a protected system file, the modified file is restored from a cached copy located in the Windows folder itself.
How To Run System File Checker Tool
So any point of time you found Windows not perform well, the laptop freezes at startup or getting a blue screen error frequently. All these are Symptoms of System File Corruption and running Windows 10 system file checker utility will be a good solution for you. Here is how to repair Corrupted system files on Windows 10.
- From start, menu search for cmd
- Right-click on the command prompt and select run as administrator,
- When the command prompt opens type the below command and hit enter key to execute the command.
sfc /scannow
You see text: Beginning system scan. This process takes some time. Beginning verification phase of system scan.Verification 2% complete.
Well sometimes while running sfc / scannow command you may encounter error “Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested Service or Start the Repair Service” This mostly occurs because of its dependency service “Windows Modules Installer service” not started or it’s disabled. And you need to start the service following steps below.
- Press Windows 10 + R, type services.msc and click ok
- This will open windows services console,
- Scroll down and locate Windows Modules Installer service
- Right click on Windows Modules Installer service and select start
- That’s all close everything and run the sfc /scannow command again.
During the scanning process, SFC command will scan all protected system files in your Windows installation folder and check for any corrupted, missing files. If any files are found corrupt or missing it will replace them with a cached copy that is located in a compressed folder at %WinDir%System32\dllcache. Wait until 100% complete the scanning process. Then after restart windows to take effect the changes have been made by sfc command.
System File checker Results
Once the scan completes, you will see one of the following messages:
- Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations: This indicates that your system doesn’t have any missing or corrupted files.
- Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation: This message means that there was a problem during the scan and an offline scan is required.
- Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them. Details are included in the CBS.Log %WinDir%\Logs\CBS\CBS.log: You will get this message when SFC was able to fix the problem. Now, you can move on or you can view the logs to get more details.
- Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. Details are included in the CBS.Log %WinDir%\Logs\CBS\CBS.log: In this case, you’ll need to repair the corrupted files manually.
How to view the SFC log file
The sfc.exe program writes the details of each verification operation and of each repair operation to the CBS.log file, located in the %windir%\Logs\CBS folder. Each sfc.exe program entry in this file has a [SR] tag. And You can search for [SR] tags to help locate SFC.exe program entries. To perform this kind of search and to redirect the results to a text file, follow these steps:
Open the command prompt as administrator and type the command below and hit enter key to execute the command.
findstr /c:”[SR]” %windir%\Logs\CBS\CBS.log >”%userprofile%\Desktop\sfcdetails.txt
This will create a file named sfcdetails.txt on the user desktop which includes the entries that are logged every time the SFC.exe program runs on the computer.
Run DISM Tool
You can Directly Run DISM Tool To fix the errors that occur during the run of the system file checker tool To Run the DISM tool open the command prompt as administrator and type Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth hit enter key to execute the command. After completing 100% scanning process Again Run sfc /scannow command again wait until 100% complete. I hope this time you didn’t get any error messages, Now Restart windows to take effect the changes have made by SFC utility.
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