Bypassing "turn windows features on and off"

(sorry if this is in the wrong area)

My "turn windows features on and off" box is blank. this is a known error with many 'solutions' that have not worked in my case.

I've reinstalled win7 prof. x64 twice (for a total of 3 installs). somewhere along the line of installing my standard programs 9all of which work, no issues, ect.) my "turn windows features on and off" box will go blank. I tried figuring out what program triggered this behavior by reinstalling and restarting after every program installed and checking the box. it was a different program that triggered the event from reinstall 1 to reinstall 2. so, that's telling me it's not a specific program that's triggering it.

anyway, I don't have 2 hours to reinstall windows and my programs every night, so I'd like to know if there is a workaround (ie registry entries) that I can edit to enable features and programs. from my understanding of how "turn windows features on and off" works, it must only be changing a registry entry or editing a config file that tells the OS not to load those features, as in the documentation, it states that the programs and features are not uninstalled, they're just disabled.

so, is there a group of registry entries or config file that the "turn windows features on and off" dialog edits that I can access manually?


additionally, I'm really not interested in trying to fix the box. I'm interested in turning the TIFF image parser on, IE8 off, and windows search back on(don't ask). if you can't answer my question and you're not sure if it's possible, please refrain from making some reference to a tutorial I've already tried, or some snide comment about how my install must not be legit or a did a "custom install" like it's some sort of voodoo. on the other hand, if you're ABSOLUTELY SURE it can't be done. please feel free to tell me that I'm up that proverbial creek with no paddle.

covered under last paragraph...

anyway, I tried /sfc scannow on all 3 installs, on all 3 it finds an error, fixes it, and still a blank "turn windows features on and off" box.

I will keep looking for solutions.

I have read that 'solution' many times. I've run CMD -> scf/scannow on all the installs and it 'fixed' some files with now discernable outcome. the 'turn windows features on and off' box is still blank. whatever is happening, .net 3.5 SP 1 is broken, which breaks a LOT of applications. there really needs to be a way to uninstall and reinstall the .net versions. I've had intermittent issues with programs modifying and breaking bits of those installs since version 1.0, and the repairs never seem to fix the problem.

thanks for the help, but I still have a broken install and no work around.

ogorir said:

additionally, I'm really not interested in trying to fix the box. I'm interested in turning the TIFF image parser on, IE8 off, and windows search back on(don't ask). if you can't answer my question and you're not sure if it's possible, please refrain from making some reference to a tutorial I've already tried, or some snide comment about how my install must not be legit or a did a "custom install" like it's some sort of voodoo. on the other hand, if you're ABSOLUTELY SURE it can't be done. please feel free to tell me that I'm up that proverbial creek with no paddle.

You can turn features on and off via dism from the command line (dism /online /Get-Features /format:table to get a list of the features you can run /Enable-Feature or /Disable-Feature against). For example, to disable IE on this x64 box, I would run "dism /online /Disable-Feature /FeatureName:Internet-Explorer-Optional-amd64".

ah, so it CAN be done! that's exactly the answer I was looking for. Thanks a million!

I would love to hear if this solved your problem. I have the same problem and, as with you, all solutions have not done anything. The DISM instructions are not detailed enough for me.

Thanks Cluberti for the very useful dism command!!! This is exactly what I needed today!