I’m going to tell a story that probably many of you can relate to.
Last week, I experienced a slow motion catastrophic failure in Windows. It surprise me because ever since Windows 7, I’ve had pretty good luck in rolling forward with the updates and upgrades of the OS. But, that changed when I moved to the Windows 10 Creator Update.
As Microsoft posted in its website, “Why wait? Download Creator’s Update now.” So I did.
Unfortunately, it started with problems with an old NVIDIA Ti 470 graphics card. More importantly, I couldn’t run a Samsung Android virtual machine with VirtualBox due to a problem in a VirtualBox network adapter driver.
I tried the usual: reinstalling VBox, some registry edits of some VBox settings, and sanity checks on the OS and disk drives. But, no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get VBox working.
Biting the bullet, I decided on increasingly drastic measures: a roll back to a previous restore point; a Windows 10 Reset (keeping user files). While the VBox problem was fixed, Windows broke in the process: I couldn’t use Windows 10 Start and type in “cmd” to run a shell.
In desperation, I decided to try a full Windows 10 Reset (removing all user files), but stopped immediately when Windows prompted whether I wanted to delete all data from all drivers in the machine! Really?? Being old school, I decided just to do a format/install fresh copy of the OS instead. I know, so “old school”.
In the end, I was able to get the PC back up and restore my files. But, I learned a few things about the tools MS offers to fix a Windows.
System File Integrity
SFC — System File Checker
Verifies the validity of Windows system files.
Basic File System Integrity
Chkdsk — Checks a disk and displays a status report
This tool checks the validity of a file system. It used to check for bad sectors in a drive, but that is no longer performed by the tool.
Bad Disk Drive Checks
There are a number of free tools which check for bad sectors on a hard disk drive (HDD). You should not use these tools on solid state drives (SSD) as these checks shorten the life of the SSD.
Many of the tools are manufacturer-specific programs. For example, Seatools is specific for Seagate drives. Sandisk SSD Dashboard is specific for Sandisk. Macrorit Disk Scanner seems pretty good tool with a colorful GUI to boot, and is not manufacturer specific.
Windows trouble shooter
Windows provides some trouble shooting programs to help detect and fix problems. You can operate them from the GUI, or the command line.
DISMÂ –Â Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool
DISM enumerates, installs, uninstalls, configures, and updates features
and packages in Windows images.
Additional examples:
dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth dism /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth
Windows Driver Verifier
Verifier.exe is a tool to check drivers installed on your system. It is a Desktop GUI application. Be very careful with this program: you can easily trash your system using the tool–from the voice of experience! Make sure to create a backup before proceeding. A good intro is here.
Recreate a Profile
Sometimes recreating a profile may solve your problems. See https://community.spiceworks.com/how_to/121165-re-create-user-profile-windows
How to Start Windows in Safe Mode with Command Prompt
Once in a while, you may need to go into “Safe Mode” when booting Windows. If the PC can boot, try this at the login screen: hold down the Shift key and click on the power button and then click on Restart. If the PC cannot boot, you must boot from a recovery disk. Make sure you do that before trouble hits! Plug in a flash drive, open Control Panel’s Recovery tool, then click Create a recovery drive.