System Use System File Checker (SFC) to Repair System Files in Windows 11

Hey Brink,
Been having issues opening games recently, now one game just will not open or work at all even with launcher and anticheat reinstallation.
Game launcher tells me it blocked file "C:\Windows\System32\opengl32.dll". Now with the reason for my digging out of the way, I have done multiple sfc scans, all showing Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. Done the Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth command multiple times. Dism command tells me no component store corruption detected, but sfc scan directly after that still tells me that it found corrupt files and was unable to fix them. I have attached my sfcdetails but if I am honest I don't understand anything it says in there. Any suggestions?

Did you run that Dism command whilst you were connected to the internet?

Your SFC results do not show any errors in today's runs.

Errors were last detected in a 21st September run.
I suspect the component store or the SFC manifest was corrupt but, as I say, the problem appears to have been fixed.
Here are the error report entries from the posted SFCDetails file:
2023-09-21 22:21:53, Info CSI 000001c8 [SR] Repairing file \??\C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\\OneDrive.lnk from store 2023-09-21 22:22:01, Info CSI 0000020d [SR] Repairing file \??\C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3705\\mscormmc.dll from store 2023-09-21 22:22:02, Info CSI 00000221 [SR] Repairing file \??\C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v1.0.3705\\mscormmc.dll from store 2023-09-21 22:22:02, Info CSI 00000222 [SR] Repairing file \??\C:\Users\Default\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\\OneDrive.lnk from store 2023-09-21 22:22:02, Info CSI 0000022b [SR] Verify and Repair Transaction completed. All files and registry keys listed in this transaction have been successfully repaired
Notice the irrational \\ in the paths.



Denis

Try3 said:

Did you run that Dism command whilst you were connected to the internet?

I suspect the conent store is corrupted. Here are the relevant entries from the posted SFCDetails file:
[tbd]


Denis

Click to expand...

Yes I did run it connected to the internet

zvincentsen said:

Yes I did run it connected to the internet

Click to expand...

So that was probably what fixed the fault and resulted in no errors being detected since the 21st.


All the best,
Denis

Try3 said:

So that was probably what fixed the fault and resulted in no errors being detected today.


All the best,
Denis

Click to expand...

But my sfc scan still says that there are corrupt files, as well as the problem with opening the game also continuing

Please would you post a screenshot of the SFC command you used & the on-completion message telling you there were errors.

Is it possible that your SFCDetails file has been corrupted i.e. that some of its contents have accidentally been deleted?
Try extracting its results again.


Denis

Try3 said:

Please would you post a screenshot of the SFC command you used & the on-completion message telling you there were errors.

Is it possible that your SFCDetails file has been corrupted i.e. that some of its contents have accidentally been deleted?
Try extracting its results again.


Denis

Click to expand...

I don't think it is possible that any contents of the sfcdetails could have been deleted since I only learned how to open that today.

I'm really sorry but I do not know what might fix this fault. I cannot understand it.
I assume you are using a normal Windows version and not any Insider version.

If this happened to me, I'd run a Repair install [aka In-place upgrade] but only because I could not think of anything else to do.
Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade - ElevenForumTutorials


Denis

Try3 said:

I'm really sorry but I do not know what might fix this fault. I cannot understand it.
I assume you are using a normal Windows version and not any Insider version.

If this happened to me, I'd run a Repair install [aka In-place upgrade] but only because I could not think of anything else to do.
Repair Install Windows 11 with an In-place Upgrade - ElevenForumTutorials


Denis

Click to expand...

Could I still use that forum's tutorial with the Windows 10 Pro version I have?

You are in ElevenForum.
I assumed you had Windows 11 and have only now realised that you have Windows 10.

These topics are the same in both versions [because Windows 11 is, in essence, Windows 10 + a different Start menu + a different Taskbar + some new built-in apps].
SFC - TenForumsTutorials
Repair Install - TenForumsTutorials

If a Repair install does not fix the problem,
1 Create a thread of your own in TenForums to seek assistance - my ditty - ask a question [post #17] - TenForums
2 Run the command WinVer and post the Version & Edition you have
3 Come back here and paste in a link to your new thread so I can follow it. I expect others will also want to do so.


Best of luck,
Denis

But don't understand the first sentence in all three options.
Had a computer for 20 years and never had cause to learn that.

polli said:

But don't understand the first sentence in all three options.
Had a computer for 20 years and never had cause to learn that.

Click to expand...

In the Taskbar search box, type: cmd
Right click on Command Prompt and choose Run as Administrator.

In the command prompt window, type: sfc /scannow

polli said:

But don't understand the first sentence in all three options.
Had a computer for 20 years and never had cause to learn that.

Click to expand...

Which do you mean?

You must be signed in as an administrator to use this option.
1 Open an elevated Windows Terminal, and select Command Prompt or Windows PowerShell

Click to expand...

If you mean that you do not understand administrator then click on it - it's a link to an explanation.
If you mean that you do not understand elevated Windows Terminal then click on it - it's a link to an explanation.


Best of luck,
Denis

I was getting random BSODs. I have a suspicion about what originated this, just a couple of days ago, but I'd rather not point the finger at something that I'm only suspicious about. But after nearly 4 months of no problems on W11, this just started. My system was terribly unstable. I briefly thought I had a hardware problem but this machine is only those 4 months old. I felt I needed to eliminate a software problem before I started trouble shooting my hardware.

So I thought the solution was a repair install. I did several & the problem didn't go away. I've done a repair install on this system once back in December & everything had been fine since then. But now, it didn't fix anything. I suspected some of the repair installs didn't go correctly because of some weird things I saw. A couple of them got to a certain point & then BSODed. A couple of them got to the point of telling me the repair failed & it offered me 2 choices of what to do next. (I forget now what they were.) But I couldn't select either one because the system had quit responding to my keyboard & mouse. A couple of times it got to the point of saying it's going to reboot in a few moments. But it didn't. I was locked on the blue screen of the repair install & there was nothing that would get me off it. So power button it was. A c0uple of times the blue screen of the repair install got to what seemed to be 100% complete & just closed & I was looking at my desktop. I spent about 15 minutes scrounging around in Task Manager & Resource Monitor looking for any evidence that something was happening. I didn't find any. I thought hey, it was about to reboot anyway. So let's see what happens if I do the reboot myself. After what looked like it was completing the repair install, it told me it had actually backed everything out & none of the repair install was in force. All of this was spread out over about 2 days. Among all the failures, I think I did manage to get 2 or 3 repair installs to succeed.

So I eventually decided to run sfc /scannow. It threw up on System.Management.Automation.dll. Well, that sounds like something Windows would use a lot. If it was corrupt, I probably shouldn't be surprised my system was unstable. It probably also explains some of the weird events in the repair installs. Aside from frequent, spontaneous BSODs, which would swing back around & reboot, I occasionally would get a system freeze. No keyboard, no mouse, the clock on the Start Bar wasn't clicking over, total brick. The power button was my only out. I don't know how I managed to avoid corrupting every partition on every HDD on my system but I just lucked out.

Despite not 3 but FIVE consecutive failures of reboot/sfc cycles, I was still getting errors. So I read about fixing a corrupt Component Store as mentioned in this tutorial. I did the dism online restore health thing from the tutorial you refer to above. After that, I did a mere 3 (I thought that would be enough) reboot/sfc cycles & everything came up clean. Yeah, once would probably have been enough, but you said 3 times is supposed to cure a problem so I figured 3 times were necessary to confirm there was no problem.

So I'm here to report success. I suppose I should have waited a few days before I declare victory, but I'm pretty confident things are back to normal. You know I'll post again if things are in fact still foobar.

And oh yeah. By the way . . .

THANK YOU!!!

Well . . . Things have been much improved. But I've been seeing with gradually increasing frequency lately that File Explorer crashes. It's really annoying, too. It will be in background. I'll be doing something in some other task. Suddenly everything flickers & the order of my icons on the Task Bar gets completely scrambled. And File Explorer will close. I have my open tasks in a certain order on the Task Bar because I use Win+1, Win+2, Win+3, etc. all the time for quick task switching. I know where everybody is supposed to be. But File Explorer has been messing it up. This was happening occasionally before I started getting the BSODs I mention above. But it seemed to get more frequent as these BSODs were happening.

So I did a straight web search outside elevenforum. It seems this has been going on for longer than I've been using W11. One suggestion offered is sfc. Well, I've just covered that one like stink on $#*). But one suggestion that really made sense was to clear the File Explorer history. I had no idea such history even existed. I wish there were some way to see how much of it there is & what's in it. I suppose I should hunt down a way to stop that from being collected. In any case, I am now going to add a routine operation to my daily regimen: clear File Explorer history. It makes sense, though. I've been using W11 for almost 4 months, like I said. I assume the File Explorer history has been accumulating like dust bunnies in an attic. The history probably reached a knee in the curve & there became too much of it. File Explorer was overwhelmed by its own history & it kept crashing. I think it caused one BSOD today after I got my sfc issue squared away. So we'll see if this finally does settle things down.

It would be really great if you could go into settings for File Explorer & tell it to erase history every so many days or so many hours or immediately, as in don't keep any history. It's tedious to have to do things like this manually all the time.

WildWilly said:

BSODs

Click to expand...

For BSOD troubleshooting please run the V2 log collector > open a new thread

@zbook Thank you very much for the link to the log collector. I did have about 18 hours at least of uninterrupted service from my system. But then, unexpectedly, it just BSODed on me a short while ago. I was actually on this page & I had typed a word I wanted Firefox to find in this page. Between 2 letters of that word, everything froze, no keyboard, no mouse, the clock on the Task Bar quit ticking over. I decided to just wait & after about 30 seconds, maybe longer, I got a BSOD. Sorry, I didn't note the name of the error on the screen. However, I'm sure it's in the collected information I'm about to post in that other area of elevenforum. I'll come back & post the link to that thread here once I've posted it over there. Thanks again for the advice.

This should be a mandatory read for anyone joining here, it may save some clutter.

My BSOD report is over here: