One elegant option to deal with file corruption on a Windows system is to run the SFC /scannow command on the machine running the operating system.
SFC, which stands for System File Checker, scans all protected system files for corruption and attempts to repair it by copying a cached copy of each corrupted file from the system32dllcache folder.
This works sometimes but not all of the time. For instance, if the cached copy is corrupted as well, then it won’t succeed.
A message like “Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them” highlights the issue.
That’s where the free program SFCFix comes into play. It parses the CBS.log file that the sfc /scannow command creates for corrupt files to repair them. The application itself is portable and compatible with all recent versions of Windows.
The website of the program does not reveal much about how the program achieves that and how it differs, only that it “uses advanced algorithmic searches to find and replace corrupt/missing system files”. On another web page, it is revealed that it is using file hashes.
Update: The program website is no longer available. We have uploaded the latest working version of SFCFix to our server. You can download it with a click on the following link: SFCFix.zip Please note that we don’t support the program in any way.
The program is easy to use, but you may want to be cautious about it nevertheless. First of all, you need to be sure that there is no malware on the system if the source of the corruption was a malware attack.
Second, you may want to create a system backup just in case so that you can restore the current version of Windows in case something goes wrong along the way.
Before you run SFCFix, run sfc /scannow as it uses the information of the log that the process creates.
- Tap on the Windows-key, type cmd.exe, right-click on the result and select “run as administrator” to open an elevated command prompt.
- Type sfc /scannow and hit enter.
- The process checks all protected system files for corruption and attempts to repair any files that are corrupted.
Once the process has run its course, run SFCFix on the system.
A full scan may take anywhere from 15 minutes to 30 minutes depending on several factors. The program informs you if the scan will take longer than the projected 15 minutes so that you know how long you have to wait approximately.
The program opens a notepad document after the scan listing the results of the scan. It reveals the full path of each corrupt file and whether it was fixed or repaired successfully by SFCFix.
Closing Words
Considering that it is not clear how it repairs corrupt files, it is suggested to take precautions before running it on a machine running Windows. The program may help you resolve file corruption errors that Windows itself cannot repair.