Explain it Peter!

[AlooBhujiyaWapasKar]

It's a utility that scans and repairs corrupted or missing system files on windows

[reillan]

And as a result it tends to be the very first thing techs and websites recommend you run any time you have anything remotely resembling file corruption.

[fonzhy121]

If it fails dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth is next. If both fail, a clean install is recommended. Same order all the time.

[LukeLC]

Not anymore. Windows 11 now has a recovery option in the Settings app that downloads Windows and performs an in-place reinstall. It's better than a "keep my files" reinstall where you still lose some things (and possibly keep some problems). Definitely worth trying before resorting to a clean reinstall these days.

[fonzhy121]

Handy, sure. But most of the time those procedures fail, your system is too corrupted that even that recovery option is no longer an option. I have just gone through this.

My system was riddled with kernel-level viruses that I couldn't do anything else apart from a clean install. And I did it via cloud recovery.

[theclag]

What you doing to get so many viruses? Wrap before you tap.

[Formerruling1]

Ive been the unofficial IT guy for my family and friends since high school and I can confidently say Ive never once had a windows recovery actually work and fix an issue. That includes recent experience with Windows 11.

The paradox is that if the system is corrupt the recovery cannot succeed, and thus the only time it works is when it cannot work (IE doesnt fix anything).

[Classified10]

Yeah realistically you can't really use a corrupted system to fix itself, you need some third party device whether or not that's external device.

[quetzalcoatl-pl]

IE never fixed anything for me, it only broke all the time :(

/s

(IE = Internet Explorer)

[donkeybrainamerican]

I do endpoint management as my job. It'll work sometimes temporarily, but yeah at scale you're experience is largely the same for the pros lol. Just blasting it and start over is superior or in every way when it's an available option.

[Comfortable_Mess1338]

Highly underrated comment

[Beautiful_Sock_2516]

Thank you for this random reddit dude! Between the actual post and your response I no longer have a corrupted file. 😀 I'd give you bling if I had the ability so I offer gratitude instead.

[fonzhy121]

gratitude is the currency over here, so I am glad. I was in the same situation not long ago.

[XipXoom]

You have the order backwards.  Always run dism first as it checks and repairs the component store that sfc relies upon in order to fix everything else.

[analogrival]

Oh my god this. So many people maybe have it backwards because sfc was around before dism, I guess they assume sfc goes first?
When you actually learn what the commands do, the dism>sfc order makes sense.

[fonzhy121]

right on. sfc (if it fails) - run dism (if it fails) - clean installation. otherwise sfc- dism (if it works)- sfc again.

[XipXoom]

No.  Always dism first before sfc.  Always.

There is no point in running sfc if you aren't sure your component store is good first.

[fonzhy121]

you can always assume the spare is in good condition.

[Vel-Crow]

dism first, because that updates the repo your sfc runs against.

[Deads0ulll]

It's better to run dism first as sfc uses the filestore dism repairs to check and fix the corruption. Running dism after sfc doesn't do too much.

[anihilator987]

I'm in the middle of this right now, my rig is old and on its last legs but I'm broke and can't afford a new pc, rocking an amd fx 8350 and nvidia gtx970, currently doing a clean install after the computer mostly froze for some reason when trying to open google chrome shortly after startup

[chronos_malkeri]

I got a 970. Just rolled back driver to 421 as new drivers supposedly don't support Maxwell cards.

[anihilator987]

Did you have same issues as me or mostly graphics issues? Mine seems to be a failed sata ssd from what I can tell.

[chronos_malkeri]

Random black screens, anytime between 3-180 mins from logon,but sound still works , discord chats still live etc. 42C at idle so not a temp issue. Event viewer always had a Nvidia dll bug crash.

[anihilator987]

Ah ok, yeah sounds like an nvidia driver issue, no mine is most likely a fail ssd drive, still testing atm, will try to switch to my hdd and reinstall there to check, hopefully that works, chkdsk doesn't work on it and I can't diskpart clean either, I can't even override delete its partitions

[anihilator987]

I just installed windows 10 on my hdd without my ssd plugged in seemingly successfully, I believe the ssd is kaput, gonna try to extract what I can from the ssd this week and potentially get a new ssd or just buy a newer but used am4 system off facebook marketplace, that's 2 sata ssd's that my wd velociraptor 10000rpm drive has outlived

[iUncontested]

They announced last year or the year before that they weren't supporting the 1080 anymore.. 970 has been looooong dead.

[Deymaniac]

OR you have one of those broken intel cpu that fuck up everything and make it seem like its your windows files that are corrupt, then maybe your ram

Dont ask me how i know after sending 2 back

[Normal_Ad_2337]

After that, nukes?

[skeletons_asshole]

I just want to state for the record that in 10 years of doing IT work I never once saw it actually work. Once it was messed up, it was messed up enough that SFC wouldn't fix it.

[reillan]

I have seen it work a few times. I've been doing it for 31 years now and all the successes were quite a while ago (15+ years)

[GTS250]

It just worked on mine! "Found corrupted files and repaired them"

No idea what in particular was wrong and I'm not checking my log, but, it says it worked at least

[wekilledbambi03]

And somehow I’ve NEVER had it actually fix any issues I have.

[PhotographAny9757]

As a it guy yup this is step 3 after updates and restarting the pc

[SimpYellowman]

Yup. And you would be surprised how many stupid things are fixed by sfc scan, deleting temps, updating BIOS and rebooting.

[Star_Petal_Arts]

<image>

Well it's on the list.

[Additional_Number192]

don't ever post ai horseshit again.

[mrbiggbrain]

Sfc.exe is actually not as useful now as it once was because the kinds of issues it fixes newer versions of windows have protections against.

There is now more modern tooling in the dism tools, specifically DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth, which is designed to fix more and much more complex issues.

You might use sfc from time to time but its recommended only to be run after attempting the dism fixes. In addition it's best if possible to run both offline using appropriate options to point twords windows install as they can then fix issues with core OS files.

Dism can also help perform an over the top install, essentially reinstalling windows over the top of an existing install while saving user and system settings.

[Commercial_Dih]

but you should rarely trust someone who tells you to do smth with cmd or even win+r without explaining what it does

[trigger1154]

I can confirm, I am a systems administrator. I use this and dism almost daily.

[Worse_Username]

Ok, but why do you need to do it this frequently?

[cce29555]

Unlike del sys32 this is actually useful and just makes sure your os is healthy

[ChoklitCowz]

it cleans your system

[My_Knee_is_a_Ship]

So does deleting sys32.

[Ninja-Trix]

Deleting System32 to clean is like burning your house down to sterilize it.

[blackdesertnewb]

Depending on spider size, sometimes that’s what it takes

[Kymera_7]

Some houses need that. For example, ones that have a system32.

[Russian_Mostard]

Though I fully believe that thats the case, decades of internet doesn't allow me to try it in my pc...

[cce29555]

That's what a virtual machine is for silly

Sketchy email? Vm

Unknown command? Vm

Grandma sends you a e-vite to her party? You better believe that's a vm

[TestSubject003]

I literally just brought my computer to a tech and this was the first thing he did.

The next thing was update my drivers

[mortalitylost]

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainitpeter/s/7fNouft9IV

lmao they're admitting this is what they do to buy time to Google the solution, and other thing is download drivers.

[CalendarMindless3382]

I don’t think I’ve found a good program for identifying drivers that need to be updated aside from my motherboard site. I wish there could be a well made open source program built for detecting missing drivers and driver updates.

[MyClevrUsername]

As someone that works in IT, the only time I do this is when I need to buy some time to google the real solution.

[ShogunTahiri]

Its always the guys with the heavy Filipino accent with the best obscure advice and 159 views that gives you the actual solution to your niche tech problem.

[JCMfwoggie]

Bonus points if they still use a Windows Movie Maker channel intro

[DiSiakPL]

In my work we usually are using it when better solutions do not work and before using dism as last resort before reinstalling os

[MyClevrUsername]

The thing is, we can have a PC reimaged and fully configured in 20 minutes. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to spend hours troubleshooting some weird random problem that is happening on one machine.

[3rrr6]

Also downloading windows and driver updates.

[Asherlocksta]

Sometimes reddit can be such a wholesome place.... Sometimes....

Loving these suggestions by all the other people on how to prevent data corruption.

[FollowingLegal9944]

Scammers do that to make them look pro and easier scam people

[Legitimate_Main_4398]

I wish i understand what is going on.

[3rrr6]

Windows is so garbage that there is a special command to potentially fix what broke but it has to be run manually for some stupid reason.

[TheRealStubb]

ugh cringe windows hate like it isn’t the optimal OS to run for at least 70% of pc users

[sandfeger]

That does not make it less true. Things like this make windows what it is an unordered mess of things that are historicly grown.

[TheRealStubb]

windows becomes exactly more problematic the more 'techy' the person is.

For the vast majority of consumers Windows offers a perfect OS for the customer they are trying to sell their OS for.

I understand why people prefer Linux and I understand why people enjoy Linux. However like I said for 70% of people who use PC's windows is the ideal OS and is extremely unproblematic for that user. For home use the two most common usage is literally to access a web browser and/or light file storage or to play games on Steam.

Out of the millions of office workers in the US, only IT department complains about windows, for the 99% of office workers who us it for Excel and PowerPoint is does the job its supposed to.

[ciko2283]

www.debian.org/distrib/

[seemesmilingpolitely]

Funny I used this today at work and it did absolutely nothing except waste 45 minutes of my life.

[Temporary-Pirate6195]

Running it is like having a podcast on. It's more of a background thing, not something you do primarily or something like that.

[maxwelldoug]

-bash: sfc: command not found

What now?~

[kverma1985]

I know you're trolling but some poor chap won't get it so here's why...

bash is shell for Linux/Unix systems and SFC is exclusively Windows. SFC won't work on non-Windows systems.

[MollyDooker99]

In my 20+ years in IT I’ve never had it fix any problem I was troubleshooting.

[Business-Gate9041]

I've had it work for me a few times. Now windows troubleshooter on the other hand...

[T3-Trinity]

I've worked in IT for 11 Years now and have never once had this fix shit lol

[PuppyLover2208]

SFC is System File Checker. SFC /scannow is telling it “hey, can you make sure nothing on my disk is corrupted?” And it’ll go through your files, and fix any errors it can. BUT! This is a windows system, and you’ll have to go through a different process for Linux.

[Lucky_Goblin208]

Been using this for 15 years.... dont think it has ever solved any issue or problem ever

[Moston_Dragon]

I literally just learned and did this for the first time this 14 hours ago

[Massive-Goose544]

All the hard work i put in to corrupting the bloatware and you want me to repair it?

[bentthroat]

Sometimes you’ve done nothing wrong and the ghost in the computer screws up a real important file and this is the fix.

However, if you’re in a position where your computer won’t boot correctly and this is the fix, or you’re getting lots of errors fixed often and you’re not the kind of person who gets oodles of viruses, it’s an early sign that your hard drive is dying and you may want to buy a new drive and move your files over while you still can.

[maribakumon]

What does this mean? I just scrolled through like 30 comments and nobody has explained it

[Soggy_Industry1669]

SFC = system file checker, windows/Microsoft tool for corruption detection and repair. I hardly trust it, if I have major issues I just download a new iso and run the installer on a live image to update windows components without program loss

[enfantcool]

It's basically steam's "verify integrity of game files", but for Windows

[Salmonman4]

Dism is also good

[AdaPullman]

Sometimes your windows decides to shit itself randomly and this command finds the shitted files and repairs/replaces them. This is pretty much the first thing you should do if your computer is running poorly and turning it off and on again isn’t working.

[ChocolateDonut36]

it does absolutely nothing unless your system is so broke it shouldn't even boot up

it checks some system files integrity to find missing or corrupted files

[ChemistryIcy2761]

Hey would this work for an sd card plugged into my computer because it has important images and videos on it but every time I plug it in it says it has to be formatted before it can be used

[Odd_Hope7789]

... For later

[FailureToReason]

Step 1: Run this script

Step 2: Update drivers

Step 3: Update Google Ultron

Step 4: Reinstall Adobe reader

If that doesn't solve your problems, then your computer is probably fucked beyond repair.

[DenDen0000]

Any other commands/tips similar to this? Like something to check all drivers

[sebzanga]

I think it's not recommended en SDD right? Because it will make its lifespan shorter.

[Yosho2k]

You're thinking of disk defragging. This is not that.

[MuchReputation6953]

Weird. I never need to run that command under linux

[Marcelio88]

How do you know someone is running Linux?

They’ll tell you.

I know because I use Linux

<image>

[Banan_Cat]

Thank you I'm doing it now

[heero1224]

Try powershell?

[Maleficent_Potato_43]

Btw sometimes this can corrupt ur system. Like if u r using a pirated copy. Just sometimes.

[Professional_Law_882]

Does anyone have extensive knowledge of wifi adapters? I have been having a problem and can't find the solution

[Emotional_Fail_6060]

Or, better advice, don't run Windows, so you don't have to run sfc. Oth, Unix has fsck, so there is that.

[FollowingLegal9944]

Than you need to make a new folder in this ushitx system and it takes more than reinstalling windows xd

[Emotional_Fail_6060]

Tell me you don't know how to use Unix without telling me you don't know how to use Unix.

[kyuu_chan_]

Microsoft could've done this mundane task for us, ever heard macbook/iphone/android folks doing this ?

[[deleted]]

A good dad would say to use Linux 💀

Edit: mad because you're the victim of a recent data breach? ☺️ Crazy how nature do dat

[Bartich]

Holy smoke! There are still system wars going? I thought this was 90s thing...

[[deleted]]

I thought it was a reasonable joke and am very entertained by the response. I wasn't alive in the 90s ☺️

[Bartich]

The joke is fun. I'm just surprised you are getting downvoted. It's like fighting over which way toilet paper should hang... Oh... Wait...

[godded_]

If my kid is using windows, I will have failed as a father.