Windows 10: scripts did not fix corrupted files sfc or dism, error 0x800f081f

I need help with fixing corrupted files.

There were 2 issues that were causing unacceptable performance of Windows 10 that started this saga. These did not appear right away but gradually became worse over time.


1) Boot up times are exceedingly long (14 minutes to get to log on screen; additional 14 minutes until system is usable)
2) Random episodes where system becomes unresponsive; have to wait up to several minutes before the system will respond to commands. This happens randomly. It has occurred while web serving, entering data on an Excel spreadsheet, typing in Word, etc. Does not seem to be related to having many apps open or just one. I do see 100% disk utilization on Task manager when these episodes occur.

Background info

OS Windows 10 Pro, version 10.0.10586, did a clean install
Also Running latest version of Norton Security with Backup, all updates are current

Hardware
has been running fine with Windows 7 and Windows 8.1

Note: I have left everything at stock settings, there has been no overclocking, etc.

Hardware info:

ASRock Z77 Extreme4 Motherboard with Intel i5-3570K CPU 3.4 GHz
BIOS American Megatrends Inc. P1.80 (6/15/2012), worked fine with Windows 8.1
NVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti Graphics Card
8 GB memory
Virtual memory 9.15 GB Total, 7.65 GB available
HDD WD5000AAKS-22YGAO 500 GB, defragmented and optimized 427 GB free space

Home network

ATT Uverse Internet
HG3801V modem/router
NAS Synology Disk Station DS 207+

What I have tried:
Ran Windows maintenance and troubleshooting utility found no errors
Note: ran Windows System Memory test found no errors
I have uninstalled Google Chrome and use Internet Explorer, Bing, Edge.

Previously disabled Superfetch, Windows Search, Background Intelligent Transfer Service
Increased size of virtual memory
Ran startup repair
Tried disabling One Drive
Tried Storahci.sys registry edit fix
Tried rebooting in safe mode with networking; no improvement

Tired of amputating parts and wanted a real root cause fix so abandoned the above course of action and decided just to do a clean install and not save anything; wanted a rock solid base and will go through the exercise of reinstalling everything

After another clean install would have disk usage go to 100% for ~30 seconds whenever a clicked on new tab on IE.


Tried another clean install, reformat of disk to resolve gpt/msr

Have 4 partitions on disk

Drive 0 Partition 1 450MB
Drive 0 Partition 2 100MB
Drive 0 Partition 3 16MB (MSR Reserved)
Drive 0 Partition 4 465.2 GB primary

Sfc /scannow (repeated three times in a row as suggested several sites)
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth and got cannot find source files message
Tried /source command for both WIM and ESD, (note the USB drive had install.esd file)

Checked hard drive using
wmic
diskdrive get status

returned status ok
verified HD is GPT


Tried downloading ISO file from Tech Bench and then copying onto empty USB stick; right click on the ISO file selected Mount
It “mounted” onto the DVD drive (in this case G*Smile even though there was no disk in the drive; verified that the file in G:\sources was install.esd
And did a clean install

Boot up times are now reasonable
With Edge the browsing issues appear to have been fixed

But still getting corrupted file messages from SFC /scannow and still cannot run repair from DISM even with /source commands, get error 0x800f081f


Rebooted machine

Verified I am running Windows 10 Pro Version 1511 build 10586.164

Tried reformatting USB to NTFS but trying to download ISO file from Techbench would hang at 99%.

Reformatted USB stick to FAT32, was able to download ISO from Techbench and when mounted still have files in DVD G: drive as before.

Tried to run in administrator command prompt
C:\Windows\system32> DISM /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth /source:ESD:G:\sources\install.esd:1 /limitaccess to point to install.esd in virtual G: drive. No joy.

I have looked everywhere on several sites to see if I could find already posted solutions, and perhaps I've missed something, but I've tried scripts posted in the forums without success.

I have posted a few screen shots to show admin command prompt screen and OS info to rule out simple things.
I have attached the DISM log for reference. The CBS log (16 MB) exceeded the 2MB file size limit so could not paste it.

I am out of ideas and hoping someone can help.

:)

 

Unable to access Start Menu and missing task bar icons for Edge and Windows Store

Did SFC checker, checker found corrupt files but was unable to fix them. Attempted to restore with;

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth in Admin CMD, received Error: 0x800f081f The source files could not be found. Ran repair tool on Windows Update to make sure it wasn't the issue. Still not able to find source files with DISM command. Any suggestions?

 

Unexpected reboot after upgrade to Windows 10

Hi Brenda,

So running the SFC command resulted in this message: Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.

The Dism ScanHealth and CheckHealth finished successfully, but the RestoreHealth finished with this error: 0x800f081f

The source files could not be found

 

I finally got it to work.

First, if you have a Nvidia graphics card be aware of a serious driver issue published 9 March 2016

Nvidia replaces its Game Ready driver for The Division with something less terrorizing - Yahoo News

“After finding a critical installation issue, the team has replaced yesterday’s driver (364.47) with today’s new driver (364.51)”. Note that 364.51 is beta, emphasizes how bad 364.47 is and how desperate the company is.

Go to Advanced Driver Search | NVIDIA to update your driver.

After a bit of internet searching, you will find that Nvidia seems to have earned quite a track record of botching up drivers. Seems like Nvidia should start compensating us for crashing our systems. I need to find a way of delaying updates for a couple of months so I am not at the bleeding edge. More on this later.

Tried 3 times to do a clean install of the driver, each crashed. So I HAD to settle for an express install and that seemed to work. Not filling me with confidence Nvidia!

Rebooted, and opened administrative command prompt and still have file corruptions, still cannot repair with “cannot find source files” error.

In administrative command prompt entered:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

And went to C:\Windows\Logs|DISM and viewed the report. (This is a much more useful log than what I had received from prior commands, so I suggest you start with this first.)

This identified opencl.dll as the corrupted file. But it could not be repaired using DSIM.

A long story short, the fix was to download NTLite (Download – NTLite ). There is a free version which is all you need for this operation. It does take a few minutes to download.

Start up the program and point it to where your image is. I had downloaded the Windows ISO to my USB drive from Tech Bench, so I right clicked on the ISO file, and selected “Mount”.

I copied the resulting virtual drive to my hdd in a separate folder. I looked at the \sources subdirectory and verified it had the install.esd file.

I then opened NTLite, pointed it to the hdd directory, and used NTLite to convert from ESD to WIM. This took quite a bit (more than 20 minutes, I went off to do something else so I didn’t time it). (You may be able to do this directly in the virtual drive, but I did not test it.)

In administrative command prompt entered:
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /source:WIM:{filepath, in my case C:\w10march}\sources\install.wim: /limit access

Success! The repair was completed.

I verified by

In administrative command prompt entering:
Sfc /scannow
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth

Rebooted the machine and re-verified all ok.

Now to re-install everything else and set up programs as I want them. A few more hours of work.

 

Post script: Some observations, suggestions, and lessons learned.

Microsoft was kind enough in their community help area to apologize for any inconvenience. At least that is what it said in the preprinted form.

Let’s just recap what the inconvenience was shall we?

Loss of computer functionality for 2 weeks. Luckily I have a laptop as well and did not solely depend upon my desktop for anything critical.

Time to research, diagnose, and repair was something on the order of 40 hours of my personal time, plus how many hours effort form kind souls on the internet who know far more about this who took the effort to post their findings enabling me to figure this out.

If Microsoft did try to compensate people for their “ inconvenience”, it would put a dent in their billions of profits and the compensation of executives so I have no illusions in that regard. However, some small token of genuine concern would be appreciated.

Suggestions:

1. MS should have a mechanism to notify people when serious errors are found. Why wasn’t a notification sent about the Nvidia driver bug with a script to roll back the driver to a known good state? That’s what the notifications tab in the toolbar should be about.
2. Why does DISM work with WIM and not ESD? If it doesn’t work with ESD, why have that as the only option for a clean install? This accounted for about ½ of the time spent on this issue.
3. The opencl.dll problem is well known. Why doesn’t MS have a script to fix this?
4. Why can’t MS have a list of current trending problems and instructions to fix on their community forums. That would be far more valuable than using search engines to find a lot of dead end threads to wade through.


Observations:

Nvidia needs to get its act together.

The internet is filled with several instances of Nvidia drivers causing havoc. There are too many instances to blame on ill luck; rather this is a deep systemic issue revealing subpar executive management. There is a huge deficit in the Verification and Validation processes; even the downloader does not work.

Microsoft Windows problem support is pathetic.

I understand that many users are ill equipped to fix their system and it is nearly impossible to help them. But also the support team seems to know less about PCs than my kids.

Lessons learned:

I am now deeply concerned about the architecture and strategy underlying Windows 10. The push for more glitz has perhaps reached a tipping point of unsustainable complexity rendering the future increasingly unstable and fragile.

Need to investigate if there are options to hold off on updates or roll back.

I need to set up a known good recovery point as soon as I finish rebuilding the app environment.

I need to seriously consider alternatives such as Linux or chromebook. What I really need is a stable platform for browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, media server, and email.

Tenforums is much better source of info than the Microsoft community.