I have been working in IT for a year now and have gained a lot of resources for fixing issues with computers. Mainly I have learned to properly repair a windows computer and the same steps to fix almost everything. I would like to share and ask that anyone reading this please add to this list so that we can all grow. These are all commands I run from the cmd as administrator.
- SFC /scannow
a. This is the system file checker and allows windows to make sure all of the resource it needs are there and are current and not corrupt. - Dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth
a. (these repairs only apply to windows 8, 8.1, and 10) This cleans the windows components and makes sure everything needed is there. The other two commands are steps in this process - Dism /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth
- Dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth
- If Dism or sfc /scannow doesn't work you can always try putting in a repair disk and using the cmd prompt from there. You can use this recovery boot to gather the proper files and try repairing the windows partition from this partition. Use diskpart to identify the drive letter (if it isn't the usual C:). You can then use something a little more dynamically written but along the lines of: dism /image:C:\ /cleanup-image /restorehealth /source:\E:\sources
- I personally use tweaking.com windows repair because it is the swiss tool knife when repairing a windows computer. Don't take this as my endorsement, I haven't found it doing anything malicious and neither has several forums and virus scans. But I would say the jury is still out for me on whether this program is 100% transparent.
- If these don't work in repairing the windows system and I have tried updating to the latest resources then I have exhausted my options. What would you do to repair the windows system from here? I have recently experienced a computer that wasn't able to run sfc or dism even from a remote source. It would either crash or fail to create a temp folder.
Happy exploring ;D