Has Windows startup repair or a troubleshooter ever fixed your issue even once?
Yeah, basically that. I'm back at work in Windows land on a Monday morning, and pondering what sadist at Microsoft included these features. It's not hyperbole to say that the startup repair, and the troubleshooters in settings, have never fixed an issue I've encountered with Windows. Not even once. Is this typical?
ETA: I've learned from reading the responses that the Windows troubleshooters primarily look for missing or broken drivers, and sometimes fix things just by restarting a service, so they're useful if you have troublesome hardware.
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Yes, and I've also had success using tools like SFC and DISM to repair Windows.
You fixed things with SFC and DISM? You are a god among mortals!
DISM usually needs an install.wim in order to be effective lol
Unless you do the online command so it pulls the most recent wim and does it on its own. I've got a batch file I use to fix computers at work that does the online dism followed by sfc and have had a few successes with it.
Nah, I’m currently trying to fix a PC that is so borked, that not even a clean install.wim can fix. According to some sources, there are some packages missing in current installation medias, that are not needed for the installation, but you cannot repair a borked install, if those are affected. This seems to be the case since at least somewhen in 2021, from which I found the earliest reports. Oh… and they aren’t in the online image as well. So if those break, you can only do a clean install.
The trick to a successful DISM though is matching the broken system's patch level with that of the source files. DISM basically repairs your component store using the source, so for it to work properly, you'd want to use the same OS patch level store as the source. I used to keep a few good Windows VMs at different patch levels for this purpose. I'd then patch the VM up to the same level as that of the broken machine (if needed), and then use the good VM as the DISM source.
In any case, if DISM keeps failing, then a repair install (aka in-place upgrade) usually does the trick.
Sfc and DISM have each worked exactly once for me.
That's because most people use them incorrectly. You need to run DISM first to repair the component store, but for that to work properly, you'll need source files/wim that matches the same OS patch level as that of the machine you're trying to fix. Once the component source is repaired properly, then run SFC, which would replace the corrupted system files from the now repaired component store.
If you ran SFC on its own, it may not do anything if the component store is corrupted, and if you ran DISM on its own, it won't fix the actual issue. You need to run both, in the proper order, against matching source files.
Thanks! I just learned something new!
I'm hitting over x3 now. I know, I can't believe it myself.