Run SFC Command in Windows 10

Try3 · 11 Oct 2021

steve108 said:

@Brink
Hello Shawn

,
General question on sfc/dism order:

Would seem to me that if my objective is to get a clean "sfc /scannnow" output as quickly as possibly, that running dism with /checkhealth option first (took less than a second execution time on my PC), then only if /checkhealth found corruption - run dism with /restorehealth option would be the preferred way to go. Then finally run "sfc /scannnow".

Am I missing something with this reasoning?

Steve,

Well, yes & no.

Your reasoning is exactly the same as MS's was when they suggested the same sequence as you use.
Use the SFC tool to repair missing or corrupted system files - MSSupport

But SFC is almost always going to report that all is well so just getting straight on with SFC instead is going to be your quickest option overall.

Personally, I run SFC and only bother with Dism if SFC has reported unfixable problems.

All the best,
Denis

steve108 · 11 Oct 2021

Brink said:

Hello Steve,

You could run them in that order if wanted, but I would skip /checkhealth.

Usually, you would only need to run the /restorehealth if "sfc /scannow" could not repair due to component store corruption.

Hello Brink and @Try3 and thanks for the response

My thought on running dism /checkhealth first is that it's very fast (less than a second), so I'd see the results instantly. Then if the dism detected component store corruption, it seems that I'd want to fix the corruption with /restorehealth before running "sfc /scannow" - which would most likely fail if there was component store corruption detected by dism /checkhealth and I left it unfixed. By doing things it this order, I feel like I'm avoiding the time required to run "sfc /scannow" twice - the second time would if the component store was corrupted and had to be fixed with /restorehealth.

For the general population, I agree with your recommended method of just running "sfc /scannow" , then only run dism /restorehealth if sfc couldn't successfully do a repair.

Thanks again

Brink · 11 Oct 2021

TheBladeRoden · 21 Nov 2021

What do you do if you are trying to do an offline scan from the RE Command Prompt, but it says "Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service"?

glnz · 19 Jan 2023

I used Macrium Reflect 8 to clone my existing dual-booting HDD (Win 7 and Win 10) to a new NVME M.2, but the NVMe won't start correctly. My HDD still runs, and I'm still using it.

A) While running in the HDD's Win 10, is there a way to use sfc/ scannow to check the NVMe's clone version of my Win 10 - in other words without rebooting? And to use it to check only the NVMe clone's Win 10 and not the NVMe clone's Win 7?

B) If not, please give me another sample cmd line to try to do this on a reboot. Note that I have to reboot into my HDD's Win 10 in order to start the machine, but I want sfc /scannow to scan the NVMe's Win 10.

C) By the way, my Recovery and EFI partitions (on both the HDD and the NVMe) do NOT have drive letters. Must they have drive letters for Option One in this tutorial to work?

D) Also, in diskpart ► list volume, there is NO Label "System Rese" on any of the Volumes in my PC. How does that change Option One of this tutorial?

Thanks.

- - - Updated - - -

And now I have a different question.

My Dell Optiplex 7010 dual-boots Win 7 Pro 64-bit and Win 10 Pro 64-bit. The 10 is starting but the 7 is not. On startup, the 7 goes as far as the four glowing Microsoft flags but then gets stuck there forever.

So, while I am in my Win 10, can I run Option 1 to run sfc scannow on the 7 when I reboot into my 10?

Per diskpart and disk management, my 7 is partition D: and my 10 is partition C:, and diskpart list volume shows all partitions but none of them is indicated as a System Rese or an EFI.
So, while I am in the 10, I would input the following into an elevated cmd:
sfc /scannow /offbootdir=D:\ /offwindir=D:\windows

Will that run as an sfc /scannow for the 7, I will I totally screw up my 7 because the sfc will think the 7 should be a 10 and try to change it to a 10? (Or even worse, will it totally screw up my 10 because it will try to change my 10 to a 7?)

Thank for your patience.