Checking the integrity of Windows 7 / 8 system files with the sfc command

Firstly we should get a command prompt loaded up during boot of the OS - this can be done is one of two ways:

- Boot into Windows Recovery mode (by holding down the shift button while pressing the restart button) and clicking on the "Troubleshoot" splash button and then "Advanced Options" and finally the "Command Prompt" button.

- Boot a Windows 7 / 8 OS installation disk (or recovery disk) - once the Windows Installation splash screen appears (i.e. the language selection section) hold down shift and press F10 to bring up command prompt.

We should then run diskpart in interactive mode as follows:

diskpart
list volume

And make a note of your boot drive and OS installation drive letter. We should now exit diskpart and run the sfc command as follows:

sfc /scannow /offbootdir=C:\ /offwindir=D:\WINDOWS

If everything goes well sfc should return something like the following:

"Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violation"

Finally we can restart the computer with:

shutdown /r now

** If can also run the following command to ensure repair any corrupted data in the Windows Component store e.g.

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image