Solved Dism /restorehealth not working

Hi All,
the latest update for 24H2 (Cumulative ... KB5053598 - Mar. 12) did it!
It's fixed! Dism / restorehealth works normal again.

Cheers

In the last two Release Public builds DISM is still broken. In the Beta 24h2 it works.

Hello All,
I know, it's been a while, but ...
as suggested a few times way back I tried the 'patience' thing.
I just let it sit where stuck, as usual at 62.3%, walked away for an hour and when I came back ... voila!!
... it had finished / task completed / 100%.
So, to be patient works.
I don't know why it takes time ... it didn't do that before 24H2 ... but at least it works.
I experienced no other negative effects throughout Win11 / sfc /scannow always good, but
it just bugs me.
Microsoft techies should, however, fix this.

Cheers

Ok, if you check the "similar threads" below, you'll see lots of people having the same problem.

First, Restore health freezing at 62.3%.... it's not hung, it's not frozen, it's not "stuck". If you look at your network stats in task manager you will see it's downloading files, and/or packages from Microsoft servers to replace their equivalents on your system that have been corrupted for one reason or another.

This process can take a long time. The last time I did it the throughput rate was only around 2Mb/sec which is really slow. I suspect their servers are over-subscribed accounting for the slow download speeds. Be patient, this process could take hours! Once these packages are downloaded the system will try to replace the corrupted packages on your system.

Hopefully you will get a "completed" message that says everything is OK, but sometimes you get messages that say the system could not be repaired. If you check the RESTOREHEALTH log at C:\Windows\Logs\DISM (wade through it as it's a huge file if something has failed) you will see where it failed. I have had "Source files or Packages not found", or "Source files/packages corrupted" which is scary as you'd think MS would maintain pristine baselines. What I have found is that if you try again, sometime later (maybe hours or even days) you may have a successful "rebuild", I did finally. I have no idea why this happens, I can only surmise it's being corrupted as a function of the download process or something your system may be doing in the background. I'd recommend not doing anything else while RESTOREHEALTH is running. Just be paitent and let it do it's thing.

If you do get a "successful repair" and it says everything is OK, you need to run SFC /scannow at least twice, maybe even 3 times to ensure you still have no corrupted files. You can check that log at C:\Windows\Logs\CBS, but be aware, this file and the DISM file get overwritten every time you run the commands. If you want to save these files for furthur troubleshooting purposes I'd suggest you change the file names to CBS1 or DISM1 (incrementally) so they don't get overwritten before you run RESTOREHEALTH or SCANNOW again.

I have no idea what might cause your system files to get corrupted, but it happend to me after installing an update, and it took 3 tries of RESTORE HEALTH to fix it.

Once you have a healthy system I'd recommend a backup.

Jabiru

Thanks, Jabiru, for the confirmation and extra info.
Yes, it said "completed"
I ran sfc several times after that and never had any corrupted files/repairs.
So, I guess, I'm good.
However, I will run restorehealth again and see how it reacts after it completed yesterday.

Cheers

Just an FYI some simple mods or customizations may trigger SFC errors if it changes what's considered a system file. Case in point if you change your Windows startup sound to a custom sound file SFC will trigger an error every time and change it back to the default sound. I consider it a minor annoyance and just change it back but something to just be aware of.

PS: I forgot to mention that when it got "stuck" (in the past) I restarted the computer and it showed the typical scenario after an update / restart "updates are on the way" ... so it confirms when you say 'it's not stuck ... it's downloading'

Also: just a minute ago I did the dism / restorehealth again ... it motored right through ... never stopped at 62.3% ... as it should be.

Problem solved

Jabiru said:

Ok, if you check the "similar threads" below, you'll see lots of people having the same problem.

Click to expand...

I just did a dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth for the first time ever. I have never done one in my W10 either so this pause at 62.3% was new for me. I did not know how to proceed so I searched Google and learned that the pause and not only the pause but pausing at 62.3% is normal. I am replying to your post so you and other members know that this is still happening. My computer is not powerful, the whole process probably took about 25 minutes to complete. I was reading your post and I was gonna look at the Network thing you mentioned but then noticed that Restorehealth had finished with the successful result.

Bo

Yep that's normal.

I believe the big delay is likely downloading large updates during the process. The /Online parameter indicates it's getting anything it needs on-line. There are also options for larger organizations to get the files from a central server in their network, probably much faster. If you're Internet is slow, it can take quite a while at the 62.3% stop. I have gigabit connections, normally that delay is pretty quick, but I've seen five minutes or so at that point.

Rollback_Jockey said:

My 18 core (36 threads) XEON is no slouch :)

Click to expand...

OK. But I bet my puny little computer waits as fast as yours does when talking with a slow server.

gunrunnerjohn said:

I believe the big delay is likely downloading large updates during the process. The /Online parameter indicates it's getting anything it needs on-line. There are also options for larger organizations to get the files from a central server in their network, probably much faster. If you're Internet is slow, it can take quite a while at the 62.3% stop. I have gigabit connections, normally that delay is pretty quick, but I've seen five minutes or so at that point.

Click to expand...

The /Online switch "specifies that the action is to be taken on the operating system that is currently running," not that it should get files from the Internet.


DISM will look online for files on its own, unless you specify a source, configure settings not to do that, or use the LimitAccess switch.

"DISM /online" refers to working on the live Windows image.

/limitaccess is what prevents DISM from fetching temporary repair files from the web.

In previous Windows releases, DISM didn't have the ability to download a repair copy of Windows onto the local system. You were screwed if your corrupted system didn't have an already prepared ISO for DISM to read from. Now that it can download a copy, it's very helpful to non-technical users but the process takes forever to run.

DISM is severely limited in that it can only show a single progress bar, and not a longer series of messages like:

Downloading a repair copy of Windows...
1% done
25% done
100% done
Starting repairs...

So many people lose their patience and don't allow DISM to follow through to the end.

Just wait it out. Meanwhile, you can run the PowerShell command below to keep an eye on whether it really is stuck or still fetching its stuff from the Microsoft server thingy at (62.3% of) the speed of a turtle. If you don't like turtles, then /restorehealth doesn't work so, it's not placebo, it's just how it was designed by Microsoft.

Get-Content C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log -tail 10 -wait

Mine is also stuck at 62.3% now. I guess I'll leave my PC on overnight instead of putting it on Standby.

I just run this script after every patch Tuesday in Command Prompt with Admin Privileges

:: Elevation script from StackOverflow
:: How can I auto-elevate my batch file, so that it requests from UAC administrator rights if required?

:: Begin Elevation script

@ECHO OFF
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion

::net file to test privileges, 1>NUL redirects output, 2>NUL redirects errors
NET FILE 1>NUL 2>NUL
if '%errorlevel%' == '0' ( goto START ) else ( goto getPrivileges )

:getPrivileges
if '%1'=='ELEV' ( goto START )

set "batchPath=%~f0"
set "batchArgs=ELEV"

::Add quotes to the batch path, if needed
set "script=%0"
set script=%script:"=%
IF '%0'=='!script!' ( GOTO PathQuotesDone )
set "batchPath=""%batchPath%"""
athQuotesDone

::Add quotes to the arguments, if needed.
:ArgLoop
IF '%1'=='' ( GOTO EndArgLoop ) else ( GOTO AddArg )
:AddArg
set "arg=%1"
set arg=%arg:"=%
IF '%1'=='!arg!' ( GOTO NoQuotes )
set "batchArgs=%batchArgs% "%1""
GOTO QuotesDone
:NoQuotes
set "batchArgs=%batchArgs% %1"
:QuotesDone
shift
GOTO ArgLoop
:EndArgLoop

::Create and run the vb script to elevate the batch file
ECHO Set UAC = CreateObject^("Shell.Application"^) > "%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs"
ECHO UAC.ShellExecute "cmd", "/c ""!batchPath! !batchArgs!""", "", "runas", 1 >> "%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs"
"%temp%\OEgetPrivileges.vbs"
exit /B

:START
::Remove the elevation tag and set the correct working directory
IF '%1'=='ELEV' ( shift /1 )
cd /d %~dp0

:o your adminy thing here...

:: End Elevation Script
:: Begin cleanup script

start /B /wait rundll32.exe pnpclean.dll,RunDLL_PnpClean /drivers/maxclean
start /B /wait dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth
start /B /wait sfc /scannow
start /B /wait dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
start /B /wait dism /online /Cleanup-Image /Startcomponentcleanup /resetbase

pause

Update: My DISM action finished about 15 minutes after I posted my screenshot.

If you're wondering whether DISM restorehealth is actually doing anything sitting at 62.3% (or whatever number)...

Open a powershell command window as administrator, then paste in the following command:

Get-Content C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log -tail 10 -wait

and leave this window open.

You may see various messages right away, or more likely if you've been waiting stuck for some time, you may see downloading message of the same item (e.g. 47 of 100, or similar) over and over every two or three seconds. MS download servers can be very very slow at times, it's not your PC.

As long as you're seeing a message issued with some frequency (new message or same downloading message) then DISM is working. Just let it run and hope it finishes in some minutes, hours, or even a few days on very old hardware.