System Files - SFC Command

Brink · Apr 20, 2009

icynyx said:
One last question, I did a chkdsk before sfc and it froze at stage 5 43% for 3 hours, I talked to Dell tech support and they told me to just reboot the laptop. I'm wondering if the corrupted files maybe the reason for chkdsk not being able to finish.

Thanks for the quick response. :D

It could be. Chkdsk is is for corrupted hard drive sectors, and SFC is for corrupted system files. Unfortunately they cannot always repair the corruption.

dtgVA · May 9, 2009

Brink...

You are indeed amazing! This website should be the first resource for anyone with a Vista problem.

I'm still having problems periodically with the error message "....Desktop refers to a location that is not available." Rebooting always fixes the problem. Someone suggested that I try sfc. Not being familiar with that, I came to this forum and found all the info I needed.

So I ran sfc /verifyonly and it found some violations. Following the suggestions in your tutorial, I then ran sfc /scannow. It found corrupt files but was unable to fix them. Viewing the cbs.log file, it appears that sfc was able to repair all corrupt files except one. After weeding through all of the log, I found this entry:

2009-05-09 15:37:36, Info CSI 0000014b [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:72{36}]"\??\C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar"\[l:24{12}]"settings.ini"; source file in store is also corrupted

Two questions, 1) Is the source file referenced here Windows Sidebar? 2) If I simply delete the settings.ini file would Vista just autmatically recreate one? I used the Windows Sidebar for about a month when I got my laptop in December 08 but realized it was a resource hog and stop using it.

Vista Home Premium SP1 came preinstalled on my laptop so I don't have a Vista CD/DVD.

Some guidance on this issue would be greatly appreciated.

dtgVA

Brink · May 9, 2009

dtgVA,

Here's a copy of my settings.ini file below in a ZIP file that you can download and use to replace your corrupted on in C:\Programs Files\Windows Sidebar.

Take Ownership of your C:\Programs Files\Windows Sidebar\settings.ini file.
Rename your settings.ini file to settings.ini.bak so it will be a backup of the original.
Copy and Paste my settings.ini file to C:\Programs Files\Windows Sidebar, and approve.
Double check to make sure that the new settings.ini file has Trusted Installer as the owner.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

dtgVA · May 10, 2009

Brink said:
dtgVA,

Here's a copy of my settings.ini file below in a ZIP file that you can download and use to replace your corrupted on in C:\Programs Files\Windows Sidebar.

Take Ownership of your C:\Programs Files\Windows Sidebar\settings.ini file.

Rename your settings.ini file to settings.ini.bak so it will be a backup of the original.

Copy and Paste my settings.ini file to C:\Programs Files\Windows Sidebar, and approve.

Double check to make sure that the new settings.ini file has Trusted Installer as the owner.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Brink...

Thanks so much for your suggestions. I noticed something when I tried to Take Ownership of the settings.ini. The TAKEOWN command kept saying ERROR invalid argument/option - 'Files\Windows. I'm entering takeown /f c:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar\settings.ini . I know the directory exists because I can use cd c:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar and do a directory listing and see the settings.ini file. So I had take ownership of the settings.ini file using Windows Explorer and that worked. I copied the settings.ini file you provided and then ran sfc and it still reported the settings.ini file was corrupt as well as its source.

Later today I got the following message: Your user profile was not loaded correctly! You have been logged on with a temporay profile. I then rebooted and everything was okay. I realized then that my issues with the desktop not being found and this recent one must be due to a corrupt user profile. Does that assumption seem right to you?

I've read your tutorial about user profile not loading correctly and how to delete a user profile but I need some clarification before attempting this.

I only have one user account with me as Administrator. When I delete that account, you mentioned be sure to select Keep Files to save a folder on the desktop. When I reboot, will Vista ask me to create another user account? I noticed there is a hidden folder under my current user profile called AppData. Should that folder also be copied to the new user account name?

What will happen to access to all my applications? (i.e. Outlook and iTunes) I frequently backup my Outlook pst file as well as my iTunes Library. Is access to these programs depended on user accounts?

Thanks for the hand-holding,
dtgVA

Brink · May 11, 2009

dtgVA,

I would say that you do have some form of corruption with your user profile. See if you may be able to repair it first using this tutorial instead.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/1...-failed-logon-user-profile-cannot-loaded.html

dtgVA · May 11, 2009

Brink said:
dtgVA,

I would say that you do have some form of corruption with your user profile. See if you may be able to repair it first using this tutorial instead.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/1...-failed-logon-user-profile-cannot-loaded.html

Brink...

Okay, in regedit under the ProfileList entry I have two user accounts listed 1) My name and 2) Administrator. Neither have .bak at the end of the SID Key aka long number. I'm interested in fixing the user account with my name. So no .bak entry, what does that indicate?

dtgVA

Brink · May 11, 2009

It means that you'll have to use this tutorial below instead. Be sure to create backups of anything that you do not want to lose first to be safe though.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/135858-user-profile-error-logged-temporary-profile.html

dtgVA · May 11, 2009

Brink said:
It means that you'll have to use this tutorial below instead. Be sure to create backups of anything that you do not want to lose first to be safe though.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/135858-user-profile-error-logged-temporary-profile.html

According to tihis tutorial, it too says the SID key should end in .bak. If my user profile SID entry in regedit does not have .bak, when I delete it, should it still recreate it when I reboot or is it permanently gone and I will create a completely new user profile/account?

I've saved the folders associated with the user account I want to delete to a DVD. When the account is recreated or a new one created, do I simply copy the old account files to the new one?

Much thanks,
dtgVA

Brink · May 11, 2009

It is suppose to recreate it. If not, then you can follow the NOTE under step 10 to create a new account and restore your user settings by copying the backed up C:\Users\(user-name) folders into the corresponding new accounts C:\Users\(user-name) folders.

dtgVA · May 11, 2009

Nothing fails but a try! I'm a little nervous about this :confused:

but I have your instructions and have backuped my pertinent data so I think I'm prepared. I do think this is the right decision because the 'desktop is unavailable' and 'user login did not load properly' messages are starting to appear more frequently. It's weird that simply rebooting seems to bring everything back ok. It's as if the system temporarily loses the info then finds it. Anyway, wish me the best! I'll report back later tonight on how things went.

dtgVA

Brink · May 11, 2009

dtgVA said:
Nothing fails but a try! I'm a little nervous about this but I have your instructions and have backuped my pertinent data so I think I'm prepared. I do think this is the right decision because the 'desktop is unavailable' and 'user login did not load properly' messages are starting to appear more frequently. It's weird that simply rebooting seems to bring everything back ok. It's as if the system temporarily loses the info then finds it. Anyway, wish me the best! I'll report back later tonight on how things went.

dtgVA

I hope it goes smoothly for you. Please let us know how it went for you.

dtgVA · May 11, 2009

Hey Brink...

I made it back. And I'm not in tears! As I suspected, since I did not have a .bak SID entry, deleting the SID entry I did have actually deleted the user account; it did not recreate the account I was having problems with. Since you forewarned me in the tutorial that that might happen, I simply created a new user account. Creating the new user account was like starting with a fresh Vista without the hassle of having to reinstall all my applications. I did however have to setup Outlook and iTunes with all the proper settings. And all the websites I frequent that require user names and passwords, I had to re-enter all that info. I had all my backup information so it was just a little time consuming.

Thank you for assisting me on this journey! Any suggestions on maintaining a healthy Vista user profile so as to avoid these issues in the future?

Regards,
dtgVA

Brink · May 11, 2009

You're welcome dtgVA. I'm happy to hear that you got it sorted out now. My best advice is to avoid registry cleaning programs, and to always keep good backups to make restoring easy if needed.

Woodbear99 · May 15, 2009

The tutorial DOES NOT tell you how to run SFC...only how to read the logs and repair files that SFC could not repair...

Where is the instruction for running SFC? Am I missing something????

Brink · May 15, 2009

Hello Woodbear, and welcome to Vista Forums.

It sure does tell you how to in the steps under Here's How:. Just need to scroll down a bit further.

You would want to run the sfc /scannow command.

dtgVA · May 15, 2009

Woodbear99 said:
The tutorial DOES NOT tell you how to run SFC...only how to read the logs and repair files that SFC could not repair...

Where is the instruction for running SFC? Am I missing something????

I don't think you read far enough on the tutorial page. Click on the link below and under the Here's How section you'll find the instructions you're looking for.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/66978-system-files-sfc-command.html

Hope this helps.

dtgVA

Woodbear99 · May 16, 2009

This is what I love about Vista...when I completed sfc /scannow it reported some corrupt files that it could not fix but when I went to examine the files in c:windows/logs/cbs/cbs.logs it told me 'Access is denied' ... unbelieveable...I cannot look at my own logs...like what was I going to do? steal them? Really stupid.

Brink · May 16, 2009

Woodbear,

If you are having some issue in Vista, then you may be able to do a System Restore using a restore point dated before you had it to fix it.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

fishman35 · May 22, 2009

This is great, but once a file has been identified using SFC and showing in the sfcdetails.txt, how do you get it off the Vista DVD? I have taken ownership and have full rights over the file, but it is not located on the Vista DVD like the good ol' i386 in NT\2K\XP. Don't tell me that repair\reinstall is the only option. According to this MS article Some Windows Vista functions may not work, or Windows Vista may stop responding, step 3 at the very bottom says to copy a file over. If Vista has really changed to where single system files cannot be brought over, like in XP, this will sour me on Microsoft forever.

I will use the example appwiz.cpl for programs and features, which is in c:\windows\system32 on the hard drive. A seach of the DVD does find appwiz.cpl.mui, but what can I do with this?

Brink · May 22, 2009

Hello Fishman, and welcome to Vista Forums.

This may be able to help you get the file from you Vista DVD.

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/86959-access-vista-install-dvd-files.html

Hope this helps,
Shawn

System Files - SFC Command

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