Windows 8.1 | Problems with Windows Update, DISM, and SFC even after a Refresh

[lochmarf]

I was having an issue with an antivirus causing BSODs days ago. I can't uninstall it so I had to resort to performing a Refresh.

Before this Refresh, I've had these issues with my Windows installation:

• I can't go to Startup Settings.
• I can't go to Safe Mode, either from the Startup Settings or from the command prompt. And if I do get in, I get bootloops.
• My Windows update doesn't work. It can find updates and sometimes it can download them but it can't install.
• SFC had mixed results. There were times when it said it didn't find any problems but there were also times when it said that Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.
• Because of the issue with SFC, I tried DISM. It had varying results but it didn't fix anything in the end. Using install.wim as a source for /RestoreHealth didn't work as well.

Now, after the Refresh, Windows can now go to Startup Settings and can boot to Safe Mode.

But it still has these problems:

• Windows Update is still like that.
• SFC and DISM just give me this. I used /LimitAccess because I assume Windows Update is broken. Both of the commands say it will perform a repair upon a reboot but nothing really happens. Windows will just boot up normally.

• Immediately when I booted up after the Refresh, I got a warning from the Action Center saying that it found some problems with my drive so I need to restart. Like with the previous bullet point, the restart did nothing. I tried CHKDSK /f /r but since I was using the computer, it had to be performed on the next reboot. Again, Windows just booted up normally after I restarted. So, I used a bootable USB to perform CHKDSK /f /r in command prompt. It found some problems and made some corrections. The "a drive needs a repair" warning disappeared on the next restart. Yesterday, I tried using /StartComponentCleanup because I read a tutorial that says using that might fix DISM. It had an error but I wasn't able to get a screenshot. The whole process took more than 2 hours. After it finished, I got another "a drive needs a repair" warning. This time and still using the bootable USB, I only performed CHKDSK /f and the problem got fixed. I'm not sure if executing /StartComponentCleanup and getting that warning are related though. I'm only mentioning this because it might be connected to as to why my Windows is like this. Also, my hard drive is fine. SMART is not reporting any problem.

Aside from those issues I mentioned, my computer is working fine. It also was fine before the Refresh. It just had those issues I can't solve.

I saw some posts with attached dism.log and CBS.log so I'm attaching mine as well. Welp, apparently my CBS.log file is too large (19 MB). How do I upload that now?

Thank you.

 

[lochmarf]

I uploaded the CSB.log on mega 19.47 MB file on MEGA. I'm not sure if that log is sensitive so I'm only posting the decryption key when an admin or a staff says so.

 

[lochmarf]

I just found out about SFCFix earlier so I'm only trying it out now. How long am I supposed to wait if it gets stuck like this?

 

[lochmarf]

After almost 3 hours of being stuck, I decided to close SFCFix's windows. Then I restarted my PC. I tried running SFCFix again and this happened.

So, I ran sfc /scannow on cmd. Am I supposed to that? I feel like SFCFix has taken care of everything already so I didn't have to do that. But I did anyway and SFC said it was able to fix the corruption. And when I restarted my computer, the system file repair finally took place. It says "scanning and repairing drive". But now, I'm stuck at 23%. What do I do? Do I just wait it out. It's been stuck for almost 45 minutes.

 

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

Its better wait for the system finish the scan, cancel the process if you see no hard disk activity for a long long time!

Sounds like you need to check the health of the Hard Disk...

GSmartControl
Follow the instructions below to test your hard drive health with GSmartControl:

• Download GSmartControl and save it on your Desktop;
• Extract the content of the GSmartControl .zip archive and execute gsmartcontrol.exe; To extract you can right-click your mouse on the GSmartControl.zip file and select Extract.
• Identify your drive in the list, and double-click on it to bring up it's window (usually you'll find your drive by it's size or it's brand name);
• Go in the Perform Tests tab, then select Extended Self-test in the Test type drop-down list and click on Execute (this test can take a few hours to complete);
• Once the test is over, the results will be displayed at the bottom of the window. Please copy and paste these results in your next reply;
• Also, go in the Attributes tab and if you have any entries highlighted in red or pink, copy and paste their name in your next reply (or take a screenshot of the GSmartControl window and attach it in your next reply);
  
  

 

[lochmarf]

I have a disk monitoring software installed too. It's called HD Sentinel. It reports nothing so far. Is GSmartControl better? Though, when I first performed chkdsk /f /r which I mentioned on the original post, SMART reported one current pending sector. Sentinel has this feature called Disk Repair where it tries to fix that bad sector. I've got this error twice already and it was able to fix them at both times. The first time I got a current pending sector was more than 6 months ago, it was because I repeatedly did a hard shutdown (long pressing the power button of my laptop) because of a BSOD issue which I managed to fix. My laptop and the hard drive afterwards have had no problems.

Are you thinking that this whole problem was caused by my hard drive? My theory is that way back in 2015, when my laptop was barely a month old, when I messed around with Windows files to get the free Windows 10 update, I somehow broke some of them. I wasn't able to get that free upgrade, obviously, but ever since then I noticed a lot of problems with my Windows which I already mentioned previously.

But I'll try doing that test once the repair is done. Will it damage my files? HD Sentinel has a similarly named feature which is destructive to the data on the hard drive.

 

[lochmarf]

Also, how do I know if there's no hard disk activity on a laptop? Do I just hear out if there's a whirring sound? I just checked and there is.

 

[SleepyDude]

I'm not familiarized with HD Sentinel but I think it can do similar tests and read the HDD SMART values.

GSmartControl doesn't "check the HDD" it orders the HDD to run its internals checks. When the HDD have problems its always possible that during the tests it fails completely, for safety its highly recommended to have backup copies of your data.

If you see changes on the SMART pending sectors and Reallocated Sector Count then the drive is decorating and sooner or latter it will fail!


Some laptops don't have a led to show the disk activity so yes you have to rely on your earring or if there is some vibration from the HDD...

 

[lochmarf]

If I decide that there is no disk activity anymore, how do I cancel the process? Hard shutdown?

 

[SleepyDude]

Try ESC and CTRL + ALT +DEL if those don't work yes hard shutdown.

Eventually Windows may start the scan again on next boot unless you cancel before it starts!

 

[lochmarf]

The repair seems to be successful as my laptop has restarted itself. I ran sfc /scannow and it reported "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations."

I'm now running the Extended Self-test at GSmartControl. It estimates to finish in 3 hours and 30 mins.

And I got this in the Error Log


Fortunately, I was able to save the log file of the HD Sentinel's Disk Repair. It seems that those errors were what Sentinel has repaired.

12/3/2020  9:00:12 AM   Sequential test, Disk: [0] 931 GB C: D: ST1000LM024 HN-M101MBB [S30YJ9BG109704] [Repair]
12/3/2020  9:00:12 AM   Test ID# 1 00030002 00250091 1 4 H: 744
12/3/2020  10:52:48 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333352, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:52:51 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333352, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:52:54 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333352, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:52:54 AM   Repair successful  Sector: 933333352, Block: 4777  [0 (1) 0 (1) 0 (1) 0 (1) 0 (1) ]
12/3/2020  10:52:57 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333353, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:52:57 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333353, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:52:58 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333353, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:52:58 AM   Repair successful  Sector: 933333353, Block: 4777  [0 (1) 0 (1) 0 (1) 0 (1) 0 (1) ]
12/3/2020  10:52:58 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333354, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:53:59 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333354, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:54:00 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333354, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:54:00 AM   Repair successful  Sector: 933333354, Block: 4777  [0 (10) 0 (10) 0 (10) 0 (12) 0 (12) ]
12/3/2020  10:54:00 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333355, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:54:01 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333355, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:54:02 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333355, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:54:02 AM   Repair successful  Sector: 933333355, Block: 4777  [0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (1) 0 (1) ]
12/3/2020  10:54:02 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333356, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:54:03 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333356, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:54:03 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333356, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:54:04 AM   Repair successful  Sector: 933333356, Block: 4777  [0 (2) 0 (2) 0 (2) 0 (2) 0 (2) ]
12/3/2020  10:54:04 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333357, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:55:05 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333357, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:55:06 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333357, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:55:06 AM   Repair successful  Sector: 933333357, Block: 4777  [0 (10) 0 (10) 0 (10) 0 (10) 0 (10) ]
12/3/2020  10:55:06 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333358, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:55:07 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333358, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:55:07 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333358, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:55:08 AM   Repair successful  Sector: 933333358, Block: 4777  [0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) ]
12/3/2020  10:55:08 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333359, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:55:09 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333359, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:55:09 AM ! Error: 23 Data error (cyclic redundancy check)., Sector: 933333359, Block: 4777  File: C:\$BadClus
12/3/2020  10:55:09 AM   Repair successful  Sector: 933333359, Block: 4777  [0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) 0 (0) ]
12/3/2020  1:38:20 PM   8 sector(s) successfully repaired.
12/3/2020  1:38:20 PM   Test completed

 

[lochmarf]

And I got 3 pre-failures on the initial Attributes data. Should I be worried?

 

[SleepyDude]

If the quick and Extended Self-test don't complete without errors I wouldn't trust that hard drive anymore!

 

[lochmarf]

Okay. Thank you. By the way, if the tests turn out fine, how do I check if my Windows installation is already fixed/okay?

 

[SleepyDude]

SFC and DISM scans are a good checking the system files but there could be also corrupted files from programs, etc.

 

[lochmarf]

Extended self-test log

"Test #","Type","Status","% Completed","Lifetime hours","LBA of the first error"
1,"Extended offline","Completed without error","100%","24204","-"
2,"Short offline","Completed with read failure","10%","21852","9047944"
3,"Short offline","Manually aborted","10%","21852","-"
4,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","16793","-"
5,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","16793","-"
6,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","16393","-"
7,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","16393","-"
8,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","15945","-"
9,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","15945","-"
10,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","13921","-"
11,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","13921","-"
12,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","12944","-"
13,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","12944","-"
14,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","11846","-"
15,"Short offline","Manually aborted","10%","11845","-"
16,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","10988","-"
17,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","10988","-"
18,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","7101","-"
19,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","7101","-"
20,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","4734","-"
21,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","4734","-"

Extended self-test screenshot



Attributes tab. Nothing changed.



Should I be worried about that "completed with read failure" remark on test #2?

 

[lochmarf]

Did a short self-test

"Test #","Type","Status","% Completed","Lifetime hours","LBA of the first error"
1,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","24205","-"
2,"Extended offline","Completed without error","100%","24204","-"
3,"Short offline","Completed with read failure","10%","21852","9047944"
4,"Short offline","Manually aborted","10%","21852","-"
5,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","16793","-"
6,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","16793","-"
7,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","16393","-"
8,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","16393","-"
9,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","15945","-"
10,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","15945","-"
11,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","13921","-"
12,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","13921","-"
13,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","12944","-"
14,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","12944","-"
15,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","11846","-"
16,"Short offline","Manually aborted","10%","11845","-"
17,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","10988","-"
18,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","10988","-"
19,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","7101","-"
20,"Short offline","Completed without error","100%","7101","-"
21,"Vendor (0x50)","Completed without error","100%","4734","-"

Another "completed with read failure" but the test result is completed without error.

 

[lochmarf]

I tested DISM, SFC, and Windows Update and they all seem fine now.

DISM, SFC



Windows Update

I could see from a network monitoring tool that Windows was downloading something and something was being written on the disk yet the Windows Update UI just kept showing the same information. Once it updated, it was already showing 85%.



The UI finally updated after more than an hour.



The computer was laggy the whole time Windows Update was doing its thing. Disk usage was also at 100% the whole time. The whole updating process took more than 5 hours. Is this behavior normal? After the first update, which was like 2 GB overall, I checked if there were new updates and there were. This time the UI was updating as Windows was downloading in the background.

Are there other tests I can do to make sure that Windows is already fine?

 

[lochmarf]

Scheduled chkdsk works now.

 

[SleepyDude]

Hi,

The HDD tests seems to indicate that the drive is stable now but I'm not 100% sure because I think HD Sentinel did something trying to "repair the bad sectors" but we never know if this problem will emerge again or not!
If you start seeing problems again with the HDD I suggest you use the tool provided by the HDD manufacturer, Seagate in this case SeaTools for Windows | Seagate the HDD have some spare sectors that can be used instead of the bad sectors, this reallocation is something that SEATOOLS can do and is a better solution until the drive fails or there are no more spare sectors available...

With 157 updates missing its usual to notice those glitches on the Windows Update UI, sometimes it shows errors because the updates are installing in the background and the WU UI is actually interfering! the best solution is to leave the machine alone installing the updates in the background.

Over time, Microsoft launched some updates to fix problems on the Windows Update mechanism so in the end WU should start performing better.

In the end if all those updates installed successfully then you don't need to worry because Windows is fine. Is not uncommon to see some updates failing to install when there is a big number of updates missing, usually this will resolve itself after restarting the machine and let Windows try to install the updates again.