# Solved: System corrupt, SFC won't work



## Noam09 (Jan 21, 2008)

Hi,
I'm looking into a relative's PC running Windows 7 Home Premium and it's giving me quite a lot of errors. 
I can't say exactly what the problem is, but several messages/errors led me to believe that a system repair of corrupt/missing files was in order:
- Example 1: Control Panel >> Programs >> Turn Windows features on or off: The system could not find the environment option that was entered. Same error comes up when I try to run CMD as Administrator. 
- Example 2: Opening pictures with Windows' default picture viewer produced an error. This led me to believe that maybe just the picture viewer was corrupt, but then I saw WMP wouldn't run either, and different system options wouldn't work (as in Ex. 1). 

I looked around and found that the appropriate files actually did exists, but still wouldn't run for some reason (e.g. WMP, Picture Viewer, etc.)

So I decided to run "sfc /scannow" which, at first, just popped up and then immediately closed. Then I tried running it from the Windows 7 installation DVD, via Safe Mode, and via other accounts. 
In most cases, it said it was starting and that "This will take some time", and a few seconds later "Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested operation". 
I also tried "sfc /scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows" and the same via the installation DVD, in which case I used "sfc /scannow /offbootdir=d:\ /offwindir=d:\windows" instead.

I Googled a lot and nothing seems to work. I'd really like to restore this system back into working condition without losing any personal data. Yes, I've already backed it up. 

Thank you for any help with this issue, this community has helped me with so much in the past. I really appreciate it.


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## mike1001 (Jun 7, 2011)

I'm having the same issue here. Have you made any headway Noam?


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## Noam09 (Jan 21, 2008)

Hey mike
C:\ (system drive) is on a 100GB partition, and D:\ (storage) is on the remaining space (same hard drive). 
So what I did is I transferred all of my important data to D:\, and just went with a fresh OS install on C:\. I had seen recommendations on going with a Repair Install (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html), which may work for you, but it seems my system was so corrupt even that didn't help. 
Downside to what I did is I lost my installed programs (registry, etc), and had to recreate user accounts (which isn't really difficult nor time-consuming). I suppose I could have cloned my registry and program files and successfully gotten them to work on the "new" system, but I didn't have the time nor patience to deal with that, so I just went ahead and did a fresh install. 
I should also mention I made a clone of my hard drive before doing anything serious (using a CloneZilla LiveCD). 
Good luck solving your problem, and let me know if there's anything else I can help with.


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## mike1001 (Jun 7, 2011)

Thanks for following up. I missed the fact that you are using Windows 7 Home. I'm seeing the exact same SFC results on Server 2008 R2, and unfortunately performing a Repair Install seems to have been removed from this OS. Continuing to try to solve the BSOD...


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## mike1001 (Jun 7, 2011)

I solved my problem using a mix-and-match set of backed-up registry files. Most were from c:\windows\system32\config\system\regbak, but the SOFTWARE file had a timestamp too close to the time of the initial failure, so I used one that I had created in \windows\tmp when I initially began this recovery process. This is the guide I followed, with the addition of backing up the COMPONENTS hive file.


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## Noam09 (Jan 21, 2008)

That's good news. Hopefully this thread can help someone in the future.


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