Can I Replace Corrupt Windows 7 Pro System Files?

[artmanphoto]

I apologize for this long post but I wanted to give all of the information.

I am using Windows 7 Professional SP1 32 bit on a desktop machine. I run ESET NOD32 Anti-virus 5.0 and Comodo Free Firewall in the background. I do a weekly manual scan with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Super AntiSpyware. Malwarebytes has never detected a threat and Super AntiSpyware detects about 130 threats each week. My start up folder has 5 programs that start up and run in the background.

Recently the machine has become very sluggish, some programs take a very long time to open and when I am using various programs they sometimes stop responding but sometimes they recover by themselves if I wait long enough.

A couple of days ago I ran sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt. After it ran it said that it could not fix several corrupted Windows files. I looked in the log file and I didn't understand what I was reading and I couldn't tell which files were corrupt or how to fix them. I ran sfc /scannow a total of 3 times rebooting after each time and each time it told me it could not fix several corrupted Windows files.

I was surprised that when I ran sfc /scannow that it did not ask me to insert the Windows 7 installation CD so it could replace the corrupted files. When I would run sfc /scannow on my Windows XP Pro machines I always had to insert the XP installation CD so it could copy files from the CD into the machine.

Today I booted the machine with the Windows install CD and selected "Repair". The "System Recovery Options" screen appeared. My choices were:

- Startup repair
- System restore to an earlier point in time
- System image recovery
- Windows memory diagnostics
- Command prompt

The machine starts up OK so there were no choices that apply to repairing Windows. When I was running XP Pro the system disk would actually do a repair action.

I am thinking that the cause of the sluggish, some programs taking a very long time to open and various programs sometimes stop responding may be caused because of the corrupt Windows file sfc /scannow couldn't fix.

Is there a way to replace the corrupt Windows 7 corrupt files that sfc /scannow says it cannot fix?

The other option is to do a complete clean install of Windows from scratch. Not too much fun as I will have re-install all of my software and re-option everything.

I would really appreciate anyone's help.

Thanks!

 

[seavixen32]

Welcome to Windows Seven Forums.

A repair install is your best bet, as this tutorial explains: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/3413-repair-install.html

It shouldn't affect your personal data or installed applications, but I'd make sure anything important to you is backed up to an external media first.

 

[whs]

I was surprised that when I ran sfc /scannow that it did not ask me to insert the Windows 7 installation CD so it could replace the corrupted files.

This is because the system has shadow files for many of the important system files from where they can make a copy/repair. But since they do not have a shadow for every system file (e.g. drivers), some cannot be repaired. Therefore the suggestion that Andrew (seavixen) made is your best bet.

 

[artmanphoto]

Thanks for your help. I will try this tomorrow and report back.

 

[artmanphoto]

I did the Repair Install today and everything went well. I will have to monitor my machine for a couple of days to see it the issues explained in my original post have been fixed.

Brink and whs, thanks for your help! Have a great week.

Bill

 

[seavixen32]

Pleased to hear that your repair install went well.

Thanks for the feedback and post back if you need further help.

 

[whs]

Good deal. Andrew's suggestion seems to have done the trick. Have fun Bill.

 

[artmanphoto]

You are very welcome!

Bill