Windows 10: sfc dism dismal - maybe this can help someone else

Tried an in-place upgrade from 1803 to 1903 but it kept failing with "...failed in the SAFE_OS phase with an error during MIGRATE_DATA operation".

Uninstalled anti-virus and several other old tools. Updated all drivers and BIOS/UEFI. Still same error.

sfc couldn't fix errors and dism never found the source file.

Closer look at CBS.log showed a hash error for a manifest file, that was not in the install.wim.

So I downloaded all the updates that Windows had done and started unpacking them to look for the file (tedious). Found it ... yayyy. But could I rename or delete it in WinSXS/Manifest? No! Tried everything with permissions and ownership.

In the end I booted from a Windows installation flash drive. Moved on to the command prompt, renamed the offensive file and copied the one with the expected hash that I had extracted from one of the update cab files.

Rebooted Windows - no more corruptions or complaints from sfc.

Quickly did a system backup and will try the upgrade from 1803 to 1903 tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

:)

 

How to get damn DISM to work?

Thx guys, I'll compress this data into a blog post. For all the so called guides I've read, not a single one mentioned it has to be WIM file (some listed even ESD which clearly doesn't work) or that certain ISO images don't work with DISM.

After I've done DISM thingie, SFC also managed to repair stuff. Which is what I've needed here.

 

Can't get SFC and DISM to work anymore on Win10

Ok, can someone help me out because this crap is starting to piss me off. There was once a time when you could simply run SFC and DISM to check Windows files integrity and if there were any problems found with the local files, Windows repaired it automatically. The reason why I want to run this is because I'm getting stupendously huge amount of errors and warnings in Event Viewer, but I don't want to run refresh because it'll mess up tons of apps.

Commands I used:
sfc /scannow
Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

Fast forward few years and we now have glorious Windows 10. Trying to run the same tools, they find errors but stubbornly refuse to fix ANYTHING. What's the god damn point of it then?

Sfc finds issues but can't repair them and DISM constantly bitches how it can't find the source. All this used to work directly in Windows 7, but in Win 10, nothing. This was one of the best features to get OS back in good state and they go and ruin it. Because Microsoft!

I've checked this thread:
https://social.technet.microsoft.co...sfc-failed-to-repair?forum=win10itprohardware

Nothing worked. And they keep mentioning install.wim where my Windows image downloaded from Microsoft itself! only carries install.esd which I can't seem to use with anything.

I've also tried this tool:
CodePlex Archive

Which again wants .wim file and refuses to work with esd.

 

How to get damn DISM to work?

you need to run DISM first before running SFC
SFC query's the local component stores to make repairs
DISM is targeted for rebuilding the component stores and a offline image the 'live' section is still handled by SFC in some cases
except on windows 8.1 and up because they changed it
but only for certain files and only if x part of the store is corrupt
so yea pretty confusing eh