Repair Your Operating System

IT Problem

When you are in your windows OS, say windows xp,vista, windows 7, server 2003 server 2008 and you try run one of the standard applications in control panelControl Panel is part of Windows Operating Systems. It allows the user access to many “applets” that allow the user to setup and configure various parts of the operating system. These applets are grouped into different sections such as “System and Security” and “Hardware and Sound”. Sometimes 3rd part applets are installed into the control panel. Most of these applets can be run by going to “run” and entering the app.cpl. Cpl is the extension to control panel applets. Here are examples or control panel applets. Accessibility Options access.cpl Add or Remove Programs appwiz.cpl Display Properties desk.cpl Windows Firewall firewall.cpl Add Hardware hdwwiz.cpl Internet Options inetcpl.cpl Regional & Language Options intl.cpl Java Control Panel javacpl.cpl Game Controllers joy.cpl Mouse Properties main.cpl Sound & Audio Device Settings mmsys.cpl Network Connections ncpa.cpl Wireless Network Setup Wizard netsetup.cpl User Accounts nusrmgr.cpl ODBC Data Source Administrator odbccp32.cpl Power Options powercfg.cpl System Properties sysdm.cpl Phone and Modem Options telephon.cpl Time and Date Options timedate.cpl Windows Security Center wscui.cpl Automatic UpdatesAutomatic Updates is a service offered by Microsoft to update Microsoft products with the latest patches, features and security updates. In earlier OS`s the system was web based only, you went to the update website such as www.windowsupdate.com and the site scanned your system for required patches. Windows 2000 sp3 and Xp used Background Intelligent Transfer Service to update without any user input, In later OS`s the pc or server polls the update server ( be it either a local WSUS Server or Microsoft’s update server ) to see if there are any updates to the operating system or applications running on the system. If so it will download and install them. The system is fully configurable, you can specify dates it will poll the server for updates, whether it will notify of updates and wait for you to run them or it can be set to fully automated and download, configure and install them all automatically. In Windows 7 and Vista, when the system has update it will initiate a countdown until it automatically reboots and completes the update process. You can catch this countdown and extend it if required. wuaucpl.cpl Active Directory Manager admgmt.msc or anything that is installed by default and it fails to load you may have corruption with that particular applet ( for a list of applets see the bottom of this artice from wikipedia. ).  There is a way of fixing this without doing reinstall or anything particularly invasive.This solution may also help fix a corrupt xp,vista or windows 7 installation as it looks for problems with your operating system install.

IT Solution

So lets say for instance you wanted to remove an application but Add/Remove programs fails to load then we would need to fix this. The instructions below show how. You will need your OS cd or a copy of the i386 directory or AMD directory. We are going to use a little known add on for windows called System File Checker. This looks for corrupt files in windows the copies a fresh one from cd or your file store.

First here is a list of the flags that SFC ( System File Checker can use).

SFC [/SCANNOW] [/VERIFYONLY] [/SCANFILE=<file>] [/VERIFYFILE=<file>]
[/OFFWINDIR=<offline windows directory> /OFFBOOTDIR=<offline boot directory>]

/SCANNOW        Scans integrity of all protected system files and repairs files with
problems when possible.
/VERIFYONLY     Scans integrity of all protected system files. No repair operation is
performed.
/SCANFILE       Scans integrity of the referenced file, repairs file if problems are
identified. Specify full path <file>
/VERIFYFILE     Verifies the integrity of the file with full path <file>.  No repair
operation is performed.
/OFFBOOTDIR     For offline repair specify the location of the offline boot directory
/OFFWINDIR      For offline repair specify the location of the offline windows directory

e.g.

sfc /SCANNOW
sfc /VERIFYFILE=c:\windows\system32\kernel32.dll
sfc /SCANFILE=d:\windows\system32\kernel32.dll /OFFBOOTDIR=d:\ /OFFWINDIR=d:\windows
sfc /VERIFYONLY

So in whatever OS you are in click on start and run then enter the below

SFC /Scannow

Then hit return the system will then whir away for a while looking for corrupt files and you will also see the screen below.

Now if system file checker finds a problem it will delete the corrupt file then replace with a clean new file. RebootReboot is a term used to describe when you restart a PC / Server that is already running. If you install software to your pc, the softwre may require a reboot to complete its installation. your pc and you should have no issues.

If system file checker finds no problems then the window will close.

For information on how and what causes data corruption try wikis information http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_corruption

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