System File Checker and Utilities
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http://live.pirillo.com/ – It’s awesome when you guys send me your computer tips and tricks. One I just received recently talks about using your Windows System File Checker to make sure all of your critical system files are intact.
System File Checker is built into Windows to scan your critical system files for errors. If it finds a problem, it will attempt to replace the problematic files from the DLL Cache. If the file is not in the DLL Cache or the DLL Cache is corrupted, the user will be prompted to insert the Windows installation media or provide the network installation path.
You can access this tool by going to Start>Run on your computer, and then type in sfc /scannow.
Another application the email brought up is Advance Window Care. This is purportedly a free program that helps keep your Windows computer “clean”.
I don’t really advocate using programs like this. They usually tend to do more harm than good. I know a case where a woman had to reformat her work computer, losing a TON of critical files, after using a registry cleaning program. The person who told her to use it gave her incomplete instructions, and the system was damaged beyond repair. This happens more often than you realize. Average users think they should just click a button on a powerful program like this, and let it do the work for them. Unfortunately, disater can and does happen.
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3 Comments
marcel r dubois
October 9th, 2007
at 4:27am
why did microsoft hide it,it use to be in the system tools area.now you have to type it in the run command.
TonyR
October 9th, 2007
at 6:50am
Ok, so do you advocate ANY registry cleaning app?
Jamie N
October 9th, 2007
at 9:31am
“I know a case where a woman had to reformat her work computer, losing a TON of critical files, after using a registry cleaning program”.
This shouldn’t happen. Even if Windows is hosed beyond repair, you can always take the drive out and extract files from it (unless the drive failed or encryption was used). Plus – where was her backup?
Perhaps we should set up an experiment to see if these “online geeks” really know what they’re doing…