Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)
Ultimate Guide to Fix almost any windows corruption, When it comes to computer problems there are nearly infinite possible causes. But today I’m going to show you how to solve nearly ANY problem with Windows, assuming of course that the problem is with the operating system itself and not a hardware failure or just with a specific program. And I’ve got just a few super simple steps involving some basic commands that should fix most issues and then one final ‘last resort’.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)some stuff to try first
But even that does NOT require wiping and reinstalling anything but rather does a complete in-place repair install keeping everything else. Alright, I’m assuming you’ve already tried the usual stuff which I’ll just list off like you’ve restarted checked for updates, updated your graphics drivers, have done a full virus scan, if it’s a network issue made sure that only that computer is having issues, and if the problem does seem to be related to a specific program, you’ve tried reinstalling it.
Context to Get Ready
Well, in that case, the next course of action is to try running a few commands created to repair Windows. Now some of you may have heard these a million times already but I will be going into more detail, so stick around. And for these commands you guessed it, they’re the System File Checker SFC, and Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management command, DISM. And these are the exact actual commands shown here.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)SFC
Really quickly just for context, the SFC command basically checks for corruption within the current Windows installation and fixes it based on a stored system image. And DISM checks for issues with that system image also referred to as the ‘component store’ and repairs it too. Many places will just tell you to just run SFC and DISM and be done with it, some say in the reverse order, but we’re going to cut out the uncertainty altogether. Here’s what you do.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)CMD
Repairing With the Commands
Search the start menu for the command prompt and run it as administrator. Then first run the command “sfc /scannow”, and let it go. It might take a couple of minutes, then hopefully it will say ‘did not find any integrity violations’. Or, it might say ‘found corrupted files and successfully repaired them’. Which actually might be better news because that might have solved your problem right there. And this a real example of a time I did this myself and it said that.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)errorfound
Though another possibility is that it found corrupted files and was not able to repair them, or even that SFC won’t run at all. For example, if it says “Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service” stick around till the end. This is one I had to deal with personally. There is an option to fix it without reinstalling everything, but you’re probably not going to like it. No matter what it says though, don’t worry because we’re not done.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)RestoreHealth
Now if SFC found anything, whether it repaired it or not, restart your computer. But if it didn’t find anything it’s not necessary to restart. And after you do that, next run this command: “DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth”. And I’ll put these in the description so you can copy and paste them. Again, if it says completed successfully, there weren’t any issues, or if it did find something it would say so and hopefully repair it. if it found something, probably restart your computer.
Finally, run the same SFC command again in any case. If it found errors and did repair it the first time you want to make sure that there are non left. And if it couldn’t repair before but DISM repaired something SFC might work now. As a side note, both commands add to the log file at C:\Windows\logs\CBS.log. And after running DISM, in that log file, it will even show this, with the exact number of corrupted files and stuff.
Corrupted Windows Profiles
Many times having done all that will fix the problem if the Windows installation itself is corrupted. If it found corruption and was not able to repair it, there are still other options. But before we get into that, if it did not find corruption and the problem still persists obviously, sometimes the issue is your Windows profile being corrupted. I don’t actually know how this happens, but sometimes your individual profile gets corrupted and causes weird stuff.
For one time my start menu layout kept erasing itself, and it was so annoying it turns out it was a corrupted profile. One way to tell if a profile is corrupted is to simply create another extra user account, and see if it happens in there too. You can go to Settings > Accounts > Family & Other Users > ‘Add Someone Else to PC’. And it will ask for a Microsoft account but no, just hit ‘don’t have this person’s sign in’ or whatever it says. It’ll ask again and again just to select ‘without Microsoft account’.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)Local User
Which means a local account. Then just go through and finish making it keeping your old profile of course then log out of your main profile and log in to the new one and see if the problem keeps happening. Though if it happened randomly not very often, you might have to use it until it does. Or long enough where you’re confident it won’t. If a new profile does not seem to fix it, or even if it does, there is still one more thing you’ll want to try.
Because if a new profile does seem to fix it, it very well could be a corrupt profile. And if it is, god help you, because almost nothing can fix that. Now the solution is simple, just annoying: Move to a new user profile, which is sometimes just as bad as clean installing, but I’ll show you how to go about doing it a little bit easier later. But we aren’t there yet. There is a method of last resort, besides doing a clean install of Windows, because we obviously don’t want to go there if at all possible.
The ‘Last Resort’ Repair Upgrade
And this option is an in-place repair upgrade. The quick rundown before I show you how, is basically you download a Windows image from Microsoft’s website, then run it the same way you would when installing a major update. But instead of upgrading to a new version, it just rewrites your current Windows system files. And it does not require you to reinstall any programs or lose any files or anything.
Only some minor system stuff might get reset like you might lose some custom fonts or downloaded language packs, and you’ll just have to re-run the windows update most likely, but that’s mostly it. So here’s how to do it in detail. And there are actually a couple of ways to go about this, both involving the media creation tool. So Google the Windows media creation tool and click on ‘Download Tool Now‘ on this page. The file name showed the version of Windows as 21H2, which is important to note.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)Download
In the start menu, type ‘winver’, and look to make sure the tool you downloaded is for either the same or a newer major version of Windows than what you’re using. Then just run the tool and accept all the stuff. Now here are the two ways. The better way to try first in my opinion is to click ‘Create Installation Media’ in order to make an ISO. And if that doesn’t work, later you could do the ‘Upgrade This PC Now’ option. Click Next and on this one make sure the language edition and architecture are correct.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)WinVer
If it says ‘Both’ or something non-specific like ‘All Languages’ or whatever, just change it to be exactly what you’re using now. So we’ll change it to either 64-bit or 32-bit. You can see by the way, by searching the start menu for ‘system information’. But it’s probably 64bit these days. Then if there are multiple options for the edition. Make sure the Windows edition is also right like Home, Pro, or whatever. Then once it’s all right, click Next, select ‘ISO file’, and then just save it anywhere, and let it do its thing.
It will download the proper ISO version and make the file. And it will ask you at the end if you want to burn it to a DVD but don’t. We do NOT want to burn the ISO to a USB, DVD, or anything. The upgrade MUST be run from within Windows, or from my understanding, you would only have the option for a clean wipe if you didn’t. So we have to run it from within Windows. Once the file is done, right-click it and hit ‘Mount’ ISO, which should create a virtual drive, so go into that and click ‘setup.exe’.
At this point, if you clicked ‘Upgrade This PC Now’ you’d be in the same spot as we are here. The first screen will say it wants to download updates and stuff, but we don’t actually want that, it could complicate things. Just click ‘change how windows get updates’ or however it’s worded and then select ‘not right now’. Go through and accept all the stuff and wait for it to get ready. Now hold on a second at this next window, this one is critical to pay attention to. Double Check that it’s installing the right edition.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)Ready to install
Should be the same as your current one. Even more importantly, make sure it says ‘Keep personal files and apps’. If it does NOT say that, and the only option is ‘Keep Nothing’, do NOT click next or install. That could mean that the ISO you’re using or downloading is for an older version than you’re running. And in that case, you’d have to go figure out why that is and get the newer one. Anyway, make sure it’s set to ‘Keep personal files and apps’, and hit ‘Install’ or ‘Next’ – whichever one you see.
And keep in mind, before this, that’s your last chance to change your mind. Now just let it run, it will probably restart multiple times. If you have issues or it fails to install at all, try disabling any Third Party antivirus and then try again. And also disconnect any device except your monitor, keyboard, and mouse basically. Or you could also try the ‘Upgrade Now’ option we saw before, or just do the ISO again. it should have been successfully installed.
and will show the ‘new installation’ setup flow like asking you for privacy settings and stuff just go through that and you’ll be able to log into Windows the same as before with everything still there. And now just use the computer and see if the problem persists. You can also run SFC and DISM again, and if it wasn’t able to repair before, it should be fine now. Now, if for whatever reason this didn’t fix it, there could be a couple of causes depending on some things.
If Repair Upgrade Didn’t Work
If the update failed to complete at all and SFC showed corrupted files, hold on a minute. If the update did complete and the problem persists, but using a new user profile does fix it, it’s almost certainly a corrupted user profile. In this case, if it’s a corrupted profile, here’s what needs to be done. Go log into that other profile you created, or create one now if you didn’t. Go to the directory C:\Users\ [then whatever the name of your account is of your original account]. Actually though, because of permissions, what you’ll probably have to do is.
Migrating From Corrupted Profile
While logged into the original account, copy everything to the Public user folder. And then log out of it, log into the new account, and then copy everything from the Public folder into the new one. Copy everything – don’t drag and drop to move, actually right click and hit copy everything. But do not copy any hidden folders, if you have hidden folders enabled, such as AppData or any of those. The hidden folders have system files having to do with the Windows profile.
Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)
And it would certainly just corrupt the new profile even more. Now all the files are in the new account, but unfortunately, program settings probably are not. Also, not all programs might be installed for all users, so you might have to reinstall some stuff. If there are any program settings that you really want to copy, you could just look up where the settings files are stored for that program and copy them over individually. They are probably in AppData, but again don’t just copy the entire AppData folder over.
If There’s No Apparent Cause
Ok back to what to do if there are still corrupted files, or the update failed altogether. If there is no corruption, you’ve done a repair install, and a new user profile doesn’t fix it, honestly, I wouldn’t know what to tell you at this point. It could be a hardware issue, it could be from some installed program. And if that’s the case, maybe either take it to a professional or do a full backup and a clean wipe. That’s what I referred to when I said ‘nearly’ every Windows problem.
Fixing Corrupted Windows Updater
But if it does still show corruption, at least we have something to work with. And it could mean that the Windows update itself is corrupted. And this is almost just as bad because the options are really limited. This exact situation happened to me this year, where SFC wouldn’t even run, and said “Windows Resource Protection could not start the repair service”. I looked at the log files, and it turns out that something called “servicing stack update” was corrupted.
And I discovered it was a key underlying component for several elements of Windows deployment such as SFC and DISM” literally the repair tools in Windows themselves got corrupted. Now you can still try and run SFC and DISM and then look at that CBS log file I mentioned before. It will probably look like this, and will actually list out all the corrupted files above it will give more details and probably say ‘mismatch’ plus some stuff like the exact location of each corrupted file.
The way I fixed this, was to painstakingly copy a good version of each individual file from another computer. You will have to make sure the other computer is the exact same build, I believe even the same minor build number. My computer was still installing updates apparently and was on the latest version, so I just updated my laptop and then they had the same version. Then you basically do a search for good copies.
Final Useful Mentions
To be thorough, I’ll mention the ‘chkdsk’ command, which is also good if your SSD or Hard Drive is acting up. And if you’re having a problem where Windows won’t boot at all and you want fix almost any windows. it could be a boot record issue. Though you can look up the ‘bootrec’ command, and its options, that might help. So at this point, at least you can say that you’ll have tried everything I could think of.
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Ultimate Guide to Fix Almost ANY Windows Corruption (Without Reinstalling)
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