# sfc / SCANNOW



## Luke Br (Nov 10, 2011)

Hello,

I have a dell laptop is running on windows vista, and i am doing a system recovery. I have entered the Vista installation CD and select recovery command prompt, and in command prompt i entered sfc / SCANNOW and it responded as not recognised. please could you help me out.

Regards, 

Luke


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## greenbrucelee (Apr 24, 2007)

is it because you typed sfc / SCANNOW it should be typed sfc/ scannow and you dont need the disc in the drive on vista or windows 7 and you can run it from the run box aslong as your administrator


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## Luke Br (Nov 10, 2011)

sfc/ SCANNOW is what i put, but it says it is not recognised. I am uable to reach my desktop because it has a problem so i decided it needed a reinstall of windows, but it won't scan the system.


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## jenae (Jun 17, 2008)

Hi, if you have a Vista OS dvd and have booted from it, selecting "repair your computer" and have entered the RE (recovery environment) choose command prompt at the x sources first type:-

bcdedit | find "osdevice" (quotes essential, press enter)

Will return the OS partition let's assume C: (if not change to the drive letter you see) at the x sources prompt type:-

sfc/scannow /offbootdir=c:\ /offwindir=c:\windows (press enter)

SFC will run can take awhile Best way to run this BTW.


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## Luke Br (Nov 10, 2011)

I entered the final piece of code and it said that it could not start repair service.


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## jenae (Jun 17, 2008)

Hi, not good, there is a very complicated manual way of fixing this, basically the winsxs folder is corrupt you will need to fix this as updates will fail among other problems.

Fortunately MS make a tool called update readiness and among its functions is an attempted fix for this problem (I say attempted because it doesn't always work). 

Download the relevant tool for your version (may have to prepare for a reinstall) If attempting to run sfc do so from the RE as shown, by far the best way to have sfc fix anything.

What is the System Update Readiness Tool?


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