Software Repair Tool is a free program for Windows 10 by Microsoft that you may be asked to run when contacting Microsoft Support.
It has been designed to run a series of checks and fixes on a machine running Windows 10. The tool provides little information about what it does.
In fact, the first screen is more or less useless when it comes to information about the program’s functionality.
It states: Fix Software Problems. Having trouble with your Surface? This tool will make sure it’s up to date and help find and fix software issues.
You may run the troubleshooting tool on non-Surface devices running Windows 10.
Microsoft Software Repair Tool for Windows 10
Once you accept the license agreement — after having read it carefully of course — and click on the “proceed to scan and fix” button, the repair process is initiated automatically without option to stop it using the interface at that point.
The screen that opens highlights some of the operations the program will execute:
- Repair System Components and detect corrupt files.
- Create System Restore Point.
- Resync System Date and Time.
- Reset System Settings.
- Reinstall System Applications.
- Repair system corruption (this may take some time).
- Windows Update.
The information provided give a general overview of the program, but lacks details or options to run only some of the repair options but not others.
Obviously, you may not want all system applications to be reinstalled, or all system settings to be reset, if you uninstalled those apps or modified system settings.
Ramesh over on Winhelponline analyzed what the Software Repair Tool does when it is run. Among the many operations, most not mentioned on the start page are:
- Reset Winsock, proxy settings and firewall settings.
- Reinstall all built-in app packages using PowerShell.
- Reset WSUS cookie/authorization.
- Reset Windows Store using wsreset.exe.
- Runs Windows Update / Automatic App Update scheduled task.
- Register several dll files.
- Component cleanup using DISM.
- Repairs Windows image using PowerShell/DISM.
- Restores default power sheme.
Microsoft’s Software Repair Tool looks to be something that sits between doing a restore/reset of the system, and running individual repair operations.
While it may appeal to users because of its simplicity, it may be overkill depending on the issue that you experience.
If you can pinpoint the issue to a specific component or feature of Windows 10, then it may make sense to run repair tasks that concentrate on restoring that component’s or feature’s functionality.
If you have modified system settings or removed apps, something that you may have done for instance if you value your privacy, then you will have to make those changes again after running the Software Repair Tool.
It may be a good idea to run a full system backup prior to running the application so that you may be able to restore the state of the operating system if the repair tool does not resolve the issue or issues you are experiencing.