Using DISM to fix a corrupt Windows 10 install - anyone had success trying?

[Ditto]

My son's PC has suffered a corruption due to power cut. The PC has two bootable drives, one with Windows Home, the other Pro. The Pro install is the corrupt one. Windows is unable to recover the files. Booting to the Windows Home drive is fine, and then accessing the drive that has Pro is fine. Chkdsk reports no issues, sfc /scannow appears good too.

 

So, I'm trying to use DISM to see if I can recover Windows to be bootable again. I have pulled together an install.wim file (for Pro) residing on a USB drive. I then do the following:

 

Go to F: which is the Win Pro drive

Go to F:\Windows\System32 then

 

run dism /image:f:\ /CleanUp-Image /RestoreHealth source:h:\install

 

H: is the USB. It appears to go through all the steps counting the percentage slowly up to 100%

 

At the end however it reports Error 0x800f0811 with the following message

 

"The source files could not be found. Use the "Source" option to specify the location of the files that are required to restore the feature. For more information on specifying a source location see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=243077"

 

I can see a ton of info in the log file, but identifying what's important isn't clear to me.

 

Has anyone successfully used DISM to recover a corrupt windows? Any tips on what next before a try a windows install keeping files or a complete fresh build.

[Steve21]

A few things to check, first you're missing the / off /source (unless typo'd above).

 

Secondly I normally use source with a WIM file, so it needs the full path H:\install.wim etc (never tried it direct but might work)

 

Thirdly, I found before that it sometimes needs the same WIM image as the version installed, e.g. 20H2 WIM won't always repair a 21H2 image etc

 

Steve

[Ditto]

A few things to check, first you're missing the / off /source (unless typo'd above).

 

Secondly I normally use source with a WIM file, so it needs the full path H:\install.wim etc (never tried it direct but might work)

 

Thirdly, I found before that it sometimes needs the same WIM image as the version installed, e.g. 20H2 WIM won't always repair a 21H2 image etc

 

Steve

Thanks for the tips. Yes, "install" was a typo, I do have the extension ".wim". Likewise the "/"on source. I do agree the version could be key. I do have the exact version number the Pro version is on and I believe it's likely the install.wim I have is for the very latest Win 10 release which may be ahead of the version installed. Will look around for the correctly versioned .wim file, but any tips on tracking that appreciated. I suspect there are more clues in the log files, but happy to take it a step at a time.

It does seem to do a lot of processing before the error message, so I presume ploughing through the checking before hitting something 'not found'?

 

*** I should add not providing a source is, I thought, supposed to make use of the internet connection, results in the same error ***

Edited March 30, 2023 by Ditto

[mrwoberts]

If you can boot the Pro into Safe mode then run your repairs from there.

Otherwise, try to boot into a Pro version setup disc, then choose the Recovery option, or if not available, drop into the PE environment (Shift+F10... I think??)

 

Here are the repair steps I would do

 

1. CHKDSK - repeat until it doesn't find any errors

CHKDSK F:  /F  /X  /V

 

2. SFC - repeat until it doesn't find any errors

sfc /OFFBOOTDIR=f:\   /OFFWINDIR=f:\windows /OFFLOGFILE=log.txt

 

Try booting again

 

3. DISM - I'd do this from Win PE using a mounted wim file

Dism  /Image:F:\   /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

 

assuming corruption is detected, mount the same Pro version (e.g. 19043...) and run this command

Dism  /Image:F:\   /Cleanup-Image  /RestoreHealth  /Source:M:\mountedWIM\windows  /LimitAccess

 

Let us know if anything does or doesn't work.

Edited March 31, 2023 by mrwoberts

[Ditto]

I can get to the screen to select Safe Mode, but it's not recognising any keyboard entries to select. Had to power of. I still need to try to boot to a Windows Pro and try recovery option from there. However, I have managed to get in to PE environment.

 

1) - CHKDSK is all clear

2) - added /scannow option. I'm sure I had this working earlier but it's now reporting 'Windows Resource Protection could not perform the requested feature'. It does the same when run from the Windows Home version from the drive that does boot.

 

3) DISM appears to need the /scratchdir in PE mode. HealthCheck reports that it is repairable, however on running RestoreHealth, it looks as thought it is working, but gets to 100% and then reports "the source file could not be found". It's clearly finding the WIM file, but not all the files within to allow recovery I presume. I'm fairly certain the WIM file is version 19045 and the disk I am trying to recover is 19045 too, but I could be mistaken.

 

Is there anything in the DISM.log I should look out for - it seems to indicate a lot of successful steps, but many 'not found' types of errors.

 

Oh, one other thing that could be highly relevant. Windows defender has picked up and quarantined a few viruses on the corrupt drive. All looked good before the power cut, but has that event made it more at risk as a result?

[mrwoberts]

If you're sure you've got the correct iso, mount it and maybe try specifying the index number - you can check the index with DISM

 

DISM /get-wiminfo  /wimfile:f:\sources\install.wim

 

Then, assuming the index you want is 1, use the following code

Dism  /Online  /Cleanup-Image  /RestoreHealth  /Source:wim:F:\Sources\install.wim:1  /limitaccess

[Ditto]

Pretty certain I have run that to check, but been having some craziness in the meantime. First up, couldn't get the keyboard F12 to be registered at boot up so couldn't get to options to select USB windows install. I concluded the time allowed wasn't enough for the fancy Corsair keyboard to be fully up and running. A quick switch to a basic Dell keyboard overcame that issue. Once booted to Windows installer, heading to repair didn't help - it still can't fix the issue. A review of the SrtTrail.txt file indicated one issue and stated "A patch is preventing the system from starting. Repair Action: systems files integrity check and repair. Error code 0x00000057. So I decided it was worth uninstalling the last feature update. In hindsight, I think I select the drive that is booting, not the one that current won't allow windows to start. The end result of this step was then being unable to boot from either! In fact it appeared that only one of the bootable drives could be seen, with the ominous error being "You PC/Device needs to be repaired. The BootConfig Datafile is missing some required information File:\Boot\BCD Error 0xc000000d." Afte ra bit of googling, the suggestion was to run bootrec.ex with the parameter /fixmbr, /fixboot, /scanos, 'rebuidbcd. I can't recall the exact steps or sequence taken, and initial attempts didn't help, and with /fixboot, I got access denied, but on one reboot, Windows limped into life and when through an extensive disk/file check and everntually restarted. So, I am now back to the point where I have the one bootable drive, but the original problem remains. Next steps are probably to have a go at DISM repair on the correct drive after booting to the USB drive and/or patch rollback on the correct drive. Beyond that, maybe it's going to have to be a clean install, but I still wonder if the DISM log file should be reviewed more closely for clues. Out of interest, I presume Windows attempts at recovery and fundamentally running DISM etc. in much the same way? Edited April 4, 2023 by Ditto