SFC runs, finds errors, but does not create CBS.log file

drose25

New Member
Hi,

Long story short: we have a Dell Inspiron E1505 laptop with Windows Vista that is infrequently used. Around March, we turned it on to work wirelessly in the house. It booted fine, but after a few minutes it apparently downloaded an update and started to apply it. Kept giving us an "Installing update 3 of 3" screen and rebooting itself after a while. Tried doing a system restore, which failed (and now the restore point has disappeared).

Vista will now attempt to boot, get a decent way through the process, then die with a BSOD that flashes too quickly to read before rebooting.

I booted to the recovery options and tried the automated startup repair process. It runs, but can't fix anything. Viewing its report, it appears that all of its automated tests come back normal.

I then dropped to the command prompt and tried running SFC with the following command:

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows

SFC runs and finishes, reporting that it has found some errors but could not fix them, and that details have been written to the CBS.log file.

It lies. :D The command prompt system actually boots from a copy of Windows on drive X. Going to x:\windows\logs\cbs I found an old cbs.log from last year. I viewed it to make sure no new info had been appended. To be safe, I renamed it cbs.log.old and ran SFC again. No new CBS.log file was created.

I also checked c:\windows\logs\cbs just in case. Same story. Renamed the old log, still no new CBS.log gets created.

For grins, I did cd %windir% to see where Windows thought it was supposed to be creating the CBS.log file. It came up x:\windows as expected. I tried creating a "log" directory in c:\ and setting the windir variable to c:\log, still no CBS.log created.

Just in case there was some permission error preventing sfc from writing to either the C: or X: drives, I plugged in a USB flash drive, created a "logs" directory on its root, and set the windir variable to that (e:\logs). Ran sfc again, still no joy.

I tried running it /verifyonly just in case. Still no CBS.log file gets created. Anywhere.

I've Googled this extensively and haven't found anyone discussing a CBS.log file that simply never gets created. Lots of articles on how to reveal a hidden CBS.log file, or how to get the proper permission to access it, but nothing dealing with the failure of SFC to create the file in the first place.

If anyone has any suggestions on why SFC is not creating a log file, or how I can either specify a log file via command line option or even just send the output to the screen, I would really appreciate it. I would really prefer to not have to restore the partition from the Dell recovery image and then re-install everything from scratch.

Thanks for your help!
 

My Computer

Thanks for the link. I found that tutorial earlier with a Google search, but I do not see how it applies as it assumes that SFC actually creates a CBS.log file on the system.

I'm not being denied access to the file...it is simply not there, even though SFC finishes and terminates normally.
 

My Computer

The only reference I can find is a bit obscure (see Best Practices for Servicing), but it says:

Logging does not work when installing from read-only media, such as a Windows PE CD.

The inference is that it doesn't work in the Repair environment either.

Ed
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown Desktop
    CPU
    Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6600 @ 2.40GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUS P5B-E
    Memory
    3006 MB
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS 512MB
    Sound Card
    Motherboard - SoundMax
    Monitor(s) Displays
    ViewSonic VX2235wm / Dell 17" Generic PnP Anolog
    Screen Resolution
    1680 x 1050 x 4294967296 colors / 1024 x 768
    Hard Drives
    3 x ST3250620AS 250GB SATA IDE
    1 x WDC WD1200JD-00GBB0 120 GB SATA IDE
    PSU
    Enerrmax 535W All-in-one SLI 20/24+6+
    Case
    Antec Sonata
    Cooling
    Antec 12cm SmartCool
    Keyboard
    Logitech LX710
    Mouse
    Logitech MX100 Laser
    Internet Speed
    Bell Canada DSL 12MBps (supposedly)
    Other Info
    2 x HP Pavilion 9700v Laptops
For future Googlers, I ran into this same problem and was able to solve it: you can redirect the log by using an environment variable. I'm my case, I did

set WINDOWS_TRACING_LOGFILE=C:\TEMP\CBS.log

Before running sfc. Also the recovery console doesn't have findstr, but you can easily use find instead to extract relevant entries from the log, like so:

find "[SR]" C:\TEMP\CBS.log > C:\TEMP\sfcdetails.txt

There, now you have a log! I hope the hours I spent on this help someone else.
 

My Computer

It sure as hell helped me! I couldn't find information on why I didn't have a cbs.log file anywhere using goolge. It was as if no one else out there was having the same problem. Thanks!
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavillion a1630n Desktop PC
    CPU
    Dual Core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUSTek NODUSM3 version 1.05
    Memory
    2Gigs of Samsung DDR2 PC2-4300 533MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    nVidia Geforce 8800 GT
    Sound Card
    RealTek High Definition Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell E172FP LCD 17" Monitor
Damn it! I spoke too soon. sfc still isn't creating a cbs.log file despite your instructions. Is it possible the logging feature is turned off for sfc on my computer? If so, how do I turn it on?
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    HP Pavillion a1630n Desktop PC
    CPU
    Dual Core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2.4GHz
    Motherboard
    ASUSTek NODUSM3 version 1.05
    Memory
    2Gigs of Samsung DDR2 PC2-4300 533MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    nVidia Geforce 8800 GT
    Sound Card
    RealTek High Definition Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dell E172FP LCD 17" Monitor
I would like to bump this topic and ask if anyone has ever been able to get CBS logging back online in the recovery environment. This really breaks the whole point of SFC since you kind of need to be able to use it when windows cannot boot!
 

My Computer

I have always used this in an elevated command prompt

findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo Thinkpad T400
    CPU
    Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53GHz
    Motherboard
    LENOVO 64734VM
    Memory
    2.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 531MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family
    Sound Card
    Conexant 20561 SmartAudio HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    15 inch
    Screen Resolution
    1280 x 800
    Hard Drives
    1x 180GB Intel 530 series SSD
    1 x 120GB Hitachi 5400rmp
    1 x 650GB Western Digital Elements 5400rpm
    1x 1Tb Western Digital Elements 5400rpm
    Internet Speed
    Medium for New Zealand
    Other Info
    Weakest part of my computer is the graphics chipset.
    Only ever used a laptop.
    Also use USB Freeview TV Card
    Lenovo Docking Station
    External Speakers
    Other bits a pieces as needed
I have always used this in an elevated command prompt

findstr /c:"[SR]" %windir%\logs\cbs\cbs.log

The only issue being that that will not work if cbs.log does not exist in the first place :p

I ran the above set command, but instead of using my C: drive, I just set the log to X:\CBS.Log, and it actually created the file. Go figure!
 

My Computer

Good, that's a step in the right direction then.
 

My Computer

System One

  • Manufacturer/Model
    Lenovo Thinkpad T400
    CPU
    Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo P8700 @ 2.53GHz
    Motherboard
    LENOVO 64734VM
    Memory
    2.00GB Single-Channel DDR3 @ 531MHz
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel Mobile Intel 4 Series Express Chipset Family
    Sound Card
    Conexant 20561 SmartAudio HD
    Monitor(s) Displays
    15 inch
    Screen Resolution
    1280 x 800
    Hard Drives
    1x 180GB Intel 530 series SSD
    1 x 120GB Hitachi 5400rmp
    1 x 650GB Western Digital Elements 5400rpm
    1x 1Tb Western Digital Elements 5400rpm
    Internet Speed
    Medium for New Zealand
    Other Info
    Weakest part of my computer is the graphics chipset.
    Only ever used a laptop.
    Also use USB Freeview TV Card
    Lenovo Docking Station
    External Speakers
    Other bits a pieces as needed
bumping this thread because I have the same issue albeit on windows 7 but I could not find a thread online about it for that operating system so I'll post here.

Same issue no cbs is created however the findstr is not recognized as an internar or external command,operable program, or batch file in the first place when operating repairs off a bootable usbdrive
 

My Computer

System One

  • CPU
    intel i5-4670k
    Motherboard
    asus z87-a
    Graphics Card(s)
    gts 770
bumping this thread because I have the same issue albeit on windows 7 but I could not find a thread online about it for that operating system so I'll post here.

Same issue no cbs is created however the findstr is not recognized as an internar or external command,operable program, or batch file in the first place when operating repairs off a bootable usbdrive

Windows 7 Help Forums
 

My Computer

System One

  • Operating System
    Win 10 Pro x64 x 2
    Manufacturer/Model
    Alienware ALX x58
    CPU
    Intel® Core™ i7-975 Extreme O/C to 4.02 GHz, 8MB Cache
    Motherboard
    Asus® P6T Deluxe V2 X58 LGA1366
    Memory
    24GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 6 x 4096MB
    Graphics Card(s)
    1792 MB NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 295 Dual Core
    Sound Card
    Onboard Soundmax® High-Definition 7.1 Performance Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Samsung XL2370 HD LED backlit 23" W/S 2ms response time
    Screen Resolution
    1920 x 1080
    Hard Drives
    2 x 500gb SATA II
    1 x 1TB SATA II
    1 external eSATA LaCie 3TB
    (Non-RAID)
    PSU
    Alienware® 1200 Watt Multi-GPU
    Case
    Unique
    Cooling
    4 case fans @ CPU water cooling.
    Internet Speed
    1gb/s up and down
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