Question New Windows 10 install and immediately have corrupted files ?

[GreenAnt]

I just installed Windows 10 Home 32-bit and the first thing I did was run "sfc /scannow". It completed the scan with "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them"

Can anyone speculate why this might happen?

Prior to this, I installed Windows 10 Home 64-bit but this had the same issue (system files getting corrupted). And it progressively got worst to the point it would not shut down properly — it would spend over a minute with a black screen before the system eventually shut off. I did try using a third party driver update tool but no improvement - and I wouldn't trust DriverPack again due to it installing crapware on the system - it said it updated 10 driver files, but the missing driver is still missing (“Sony Firmware Extension Parser Device, ACPI\SNY5001). Tried downloading and installing that manually with no luck, it wouldn't install - tried installing in Windows 8 compatibility mode and booting with driver signature enforcement disabled.

I also tried installing Windows 8 Home 64-bit. That seemed to behave better. A "sfc /scannow" did not show any corrupted files and it shuts down normally. This suggests to me a Windows 10 driver issue as opposed to a hardware failure. However, 1) This laptop does not have a license for Windows 8 and 2) Apparently (according to a warning message shown) Microsoft has stopped issuing updates and security fixes. So Ideally I don't want to leave it on Windows 8 due to this. I had to modify the Windows installer to bypass the license key screen, but it keeps pestering for the license key and I'm also not sure if Windows will stop working at some point.

If it's a driver issue, I'm not sure how to make progress. Sony removed driver downloads for this laptop earlier this year. It's an ageing Sony Vaio laptop which originally came with Windows 7 Home 32-bit, according to Sony's spec sheet. The laptop is branded as Sony Vaio PCG-31311M (firmware says model VPCYB3V1E).

The back story. I'm attempting to fix this laptop for someone. When I received it, it would not boot into Windows. No amount of tinkering would make progress: Tried a hard boot, safe mode boot, booting with malware protection/signature enforcement protection off, antivirus, malware scan, harddisk shows as "good health", plenty free space, chkdsk showed no issues. I deleted the Windows logs, booted up, and the logs file did get created showing various drivers loaded, so this suggests Windows was trying to boot up in some fashion. I imaged the harddisk before trying aforementioned reinstalls, perhaps it has some driver files I could salvage if I could find the will to restore the image and spend more time on that.

Windows 10 was reinstalled using a SSD USB enclosure with Ventoy and a Windows installation ISO file which I downloaded from Microsoft. When installing I changed the BIOS so it boots from internal drive first, then I booted up holding F11 to boot from the installer - that way when Windows automatically reboots during the installation the USB drive doesn't get in the way.

I'm more than a bit stuck. Offered to sort this laptop after being away from Windows for many years. I don't remember Windows being this difficult to fix?! Any tips appreciated.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Sound like a failing drive

 

[GreenAnt]

That's partly why I tried installing Windows 8, and that doesnt appear to have these issues.

When I was trying to diagnose Windows10 initially I also ran a drive check tool and that gave the status as healthy. Forget which disk tool now, it was one of the tools in Hirens multi-boot tool (or similar tool, jumped between a few).

I might try installing another harddisk. But I still think it's driver related. Has anyone else experienced drivers causing an issue like this?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Go get the latest win 10 using Microsoft Windows creation tool

Make a bootable USB

use that and don’t ever install 32 bit anymore. It’s useless

During install delete ALL partitions

Choose defaults and clean install

Stop using Garbage software to install windows.

USE ONLY Ms win creation tool

If that doesn’t work it’s a hardware failure

 

[GreenAnt]

Thanks. Just installed an old harddisk that I took out of a Macbook Pro about 15 years ago, so I'll see how that goes. If it was mine I'd be putting a SSD drive in but it's not my laptop, and just want to get this fixed for now.

32-bit windows was a desperation move in case it was a driver issue. Laptop was originally shipped with a 32-bit Windows. Reverted back to 64-bit.

Will report back whether it worked.

If anyone has comments on the driver front let me know. Especially if there are third party tools worth using. Also doing this to learn, and knowing what to do about drivers when Windows Update falls short and the manufacture has taken them off their website, would be handy to know for next time.

 

[GreenAnt]

OK I'm still stuck.

Installed another harddisk into the laptop. Installed Windows 10 Home 64-bit. First time I boot up I run "sfc /scannow" and it reported that it had fixed some system files. Windows behaving fine, for now, but this is how it started out the first time I reinstalled Windows 10 - it was fine at first, then system files started getting corrupted and then it wouldnt shut down properly. So I'm not happy to leave it like this and it's still a problem IMHO.

Yes I always delete partitions (using Windows installer) and Install Windows into the empty space.

I just unwrapped a new usb thumbdrive, downloaded Windows media creator tool, used it to download Windows 10 64-bit onto the usb drive. Appeared that it had worked, and the contents of the usb drive looks like a typical Windows installation disk, but when I insert it the laptop its not booting from it.

THIS IS WEIRD... Where as before I could enter BIOS options by pressing F2 and boot from a USB drive by holding F11, now suddenly I can't get any of that. Function keys arent working during boot. I've used F2 a few times to go into BIOS (eg change boot order) and I've used F11 lots of times to boot from a USB drive while installing Windows several times, and now suddenly I can't do any of that. I even try to boot from the USB installation drive I've been using all this time and that isn't working now either.

UPDATE: Ok, F2 and F11 are working again. Don't know what that was all about! Rebooted several times trying to get F2 and F11 to work. Then i let it boot into Windows, held shift while selecting "Restart". It booted up with the recovery menu next time, I didn't do anything there, just selected to shut down the computer. And next time it booted up F2 and F11 and now working again. BIOS needed a nudge to wake back up it seems.

Will persevere with yet another Windows reinstall...

 

[GreenAnt]

Ok so I did as suggested.
Installed another SATA drive inside laptop.
Used Windows media creation tool to put Windows 10 installer on USB drive.
Reinstalled Windows 10 Home 64-bit. (deleted all partitions during installation).
Booted up into Windows.
Ran "sfc /scannow". It gave "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them"
Thoughts?

 

[Deleted member 14196]

Like I said, it’s hardware related

Check reliability history and event viewer and see if you can find any kind of weird activity going on

Test memory with a memtest86 bootable usb as well

Start troubleshooting the system, the hardware and we’ll try to rule out things as we go

 

[GreenAnt]

I ran a mem check initially when i received the laptop and it showed no errors.

I just ran mem check again (MemTest86) and left it for 2 hours. No errors.

How do I check "reliability history"?

A few entries from Event Viewer...
[Windows]
1) Error: CAPI2, The cryptographic Services service failed to initialise the Catalogue Database. The ESENT error was 1409.
2) Error: SecurityCenter, WindowsDefender SECURITY_PRODUCT_STATE_ON 02000000.
3) Error: Security-SPP, AutoActivate, <info not clear here but there's several of these events>
[System]
4) Error: DistributedCOM, 1115 SecurityHealthService. <handful of these entries>
[Hardware}
<no hardware events shown>

To recap (not necessarily in time order).
- Installed Windows 10 64-bit several times. Each time "sfc /scannow" said it had fixed errors.
- Installed Windows 10 32-bit, same issue.
- Installed Windows 10 64-bit from a new download/usb thumb drive. Same issue.
- Installed Windows 8 64-bit. Did NOT show system errors.
- Installed Windows 10 64-bit on a second hard-disk. Same issue.
- Attempted to install drivers from Sony a few days ago (no longer exists, taken off their website earlier this year), third-party drivers app (updated some drivers but one still missing, and same issue, and came with crapware). Tried downloading a driver from Softpedia but couldn't get it to install, despite trying to turn on Win8 compatibility for installer, turn off driver security during install etc).

 

[Colif]

memtest should run overnight, just to be sure

its not the drives, obviously, so its another part of memory system.
Ram or PSU maybe even

What are specs of PC?

SFC has been known to find wrong things on brand new installs before and there was nothing wrong with pc. I only run it if I have problems.

Could try typing this into Command Prompt (Admin)
DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
and press enter
then run SFC scannow and restart PC if it finds anything.

 

[GreenAnt]

Hi Colif,

re PSU. The battery was preventing laptop from booting up, so I've been using laptop without battery inserted.

Specs are here: https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/laptop-pc-vpc-series/vpcyb3v1e/specifications

AMD A50M FCH, AMD Dual-Core E-450 APU, PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM, AMD Radeon™ HD 6320 Graphics.

Reason I'm trying SFC after installing Windows is because the first attempt at re-installing quickly started playing up, extremely slow shut down.

Will try DISM. Tried it before reinstalling Windows the first time and it couldn't complete, Windows was very corrupt. Will try again though.

If anyone knows why the F2 and F11 keys have started playing up again during bootup time I'd love to know. For the first several days of tinkering with this laptop its been fine, then they stopped registering during bootup, then it started working again (after a shift+reboot in Windows), and now it's acting up again.

Be glad to see the back of this laptop. It's been a PITA.

 

[Colif]

I don't think its windows.

I wonder if problem tied into the battery issue.

Its hardware of some sort. I expect ram came with laptop

If anyone knows why the F2 and F11 keys have started playing up again during bootup time I'd love to know. For the first several days of tinkering with this laptop its been fine, then they stopped registering during bootup, then it started working again (after a shift+reboot in Windows), and now it's acting up again.

the bios buttons might be caused by the format of the hdd. if its formatted as UEFI it might have secure boot enabled and sometimes getting into the bios with that set can be hard. You can get into bios via windows settings.

other thought - try turning this off and see if you can get into bios - https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4189-turn-off-fast-startup-windows-10-a.html

its also possible that is a clue though.

it could even be the board. Its not exactly a new laptop the CPU is 12 years old

 

[GreenAnt]

Yeah well my initial thoughts were a hard-disk failure or power supply issue. But then I installed Windows 8 and it behaved so I reverted back to thinking a driver issue under Windows 10. Think I've ruled out the hard-disk anyway, unless this replacement is playing up too.

With the BIOS, I think this laptop predates UEFI and Secure Boot. I managed to get back in the BIOS for now after another shift+reboot in windows, but if this happens in a situation where I can't get back into Windows I would be a bit stuffed. I've changed the boot order back to USB first now anyway, but I don't like that this is happening.

 

[Colif]

what about installing win 8 and updating it to 10 from there since its seems to work?

it should use the 8 drivers. Could be 10 missing a driver that 8 has.

 

[GreenAnt]

I ran: DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
It said "The operation completed successfully".

Then ran: sfc /scan now
It said "Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations".

At this point I might have called it a day, but the first sfc picking up corrupted system files doesn't sit well. Especially seeing how the first attempt at installing Windows 10 seemed OK at first and then (and with no other software installed, just Windows) progressively got worst within a day and spent 2 minutes closing down each time.

Interesting suggestion to install Windows 8 and then upgrade to 10. I'll see if I can stomach two more installations of Windows. Windows 8 is especially a drag because of how long it takes to install updates, which I think I'd want to do in case there's anything like driver updates which might get carried over to Windows 10.

Don't really know how drivers work with Windows. I had just assumed that unless it found a Windows 10 driver it would just disable old drivers. If it carries over drivers from Windows 8 is it smart enough to enable Windows 8 compatibility mode for the driver too?

It came with Windows 7 originally and it has a license marker for that in firmware. It has a digital license for Windows 10 which it automatically picked up on a clean install of Windows 10. I'm assuming that installing Windows 8 (bypassing the reg key stage) and then upgrading it to Windows 10 will work ok for Windows registration?

 

[GreenAnt]

Is there a way to get a nice overview of drivers currently installed?

Maybe an exported list in Command Prompt or saved as a PDF?

That way I could save that info now, do the Windows 8/10 install dance and compare the two to see if it did make a difference with drivers. Would be useful thing to know for working with older tech like this.

 

[Colif]

Is there a way to get a nice overview of drivers currently installed?

download and run Driverview - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html

All it does is looks at drivers installed; it won't install any (this is intentional as 3rd party driver updaters often get it wrong)

When you run it, go into view tab and set it to hide all Microsoft drivers, will make list shorter.

I think you can export from it. Or just take screenshots

Don't really know how drivers work with Windows. I had just assumed that unless it found a Windows 10 driver it would just disable old drivers. If it carries over drivers from Windows 8 is it smart enough to enable Windows 8 compatibility mode for the driver too?

win 10 will use the drivers if its updated from win 8. It wouldn't let you install them after you are on 10 though.
Not sure about compatibility mode, I know it has one of those itself...

Once a PC has had win 10 on it, it always can. The licence was converted to a 10 licence the 1st time you used it.

I don't know how many updates you would need in 8 to be at right spot. I never used that OS.

 

[GreenAnt]

download and run Driverview - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html

All it does is looks at drivers installed; it won't install any (this is intentional as 3rd party driver updaters often get it wrong)

When you run it, go into view tab and set it to hide all Microsoft drivers, will make list shorter.

I think you can export from it. Or just take screenshots

Thanks. Looks like that tool as an option to export as a csv file.

Though I'm currently using a Windows command for this and not sure I can see a difference, other than that tool displaying the info in a Windows app instead of DOS Prompt.

driverquery /v /fo csv > driverquery_verbose.txt
driverquery /si /fo csv > driverquery_signed.txt

Also used this in PowerShell (because this includes driver version)

Get-WmiObject Win32_PnPSignedDriver| select DeviceID, DeviceName, DriverVersion, DriverDate, DriverProviderName, InfName > driverquery_wmiobject.txt

That last command only gives info for signed drivers though. Don't know if all drivers installed by Windows 8 are signed, might use that tool as a backup in case...

I'll do this for Win 10 (fresh), Win 8, and Win 10 (upgrade from 8). Then I'll feed it into GPT4 to see if it can summarise what's different between the two Win 10 installs (too lazy to go through all that data manually).

If there wasn't a learning element to this I probably wouldn't be going through this nonsense!...

 

[Colif]

there is no difference, tool just shows them in a different format. Uses same commands.

 

[GreenAnt]

OK well that did not work out.

I Installed Windows 8. Opened setup.exe from the Windows 10 installer, and I got this dreaded message and there is no way to bypass it.

"Product Key.
Windows isn't activated on this PC. This means you'll need to enter the Windows 10 product key below or exit set-up, activate Windows, then start set-up again"

Windows 10 is a digital license for this PC. I don't have a product key. Before wiping the harddisk first time around I did try retrieving a Windows 10 product key from the harddisk using a tool (tried entering that and it didn't like it), and the original license key for the computer is Windows 7 and in any case the sticker has faded.

If I boot from the Windows 10 installer instead will it *upgrade* the current OS? As opposed to wipe and replace. Bearing in mind the whole point of Installing 8 first was to see if Windows 8 drivers makes its way into Windows 10.

... OK well I tried it. Booted from Windows 10 install media and selected "Upgrade". But all that does is tell me to do this from Windows.

No more tricks to try?

 

[GreenAnt]

Tried to activate Windows 8 using several keys posted in online guides but none worked. It's literally just to initiate an upgrade to Windows 10 which already has a digital license for this computer. I'm out of ideas.

Looks like it's a clean install of Windows 10 again and hope the driver situation magically sorts itself without Windows 8 lending a hand. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.
_____________
UPDATE:

On the Windows 10 Installer I entered a GENERIC Windows 10 key and it worked!

Generic key to install Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 8

Get generic keys for Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 to install it without activation.

winaero.com

OK then, to be continued. Will post a follow-up whether involving Windows 8 helped with the driver situation.

Just to add before I forget (in case anyone finds this via search), don't make the same mistakes I did.

1) Don't run Windows Update on Windows 8.1 if it's just to get updates to drivers. Just go through the list and install manually. Else it will take HOURS to complete. The rest will presumably be replaced by Windows 10 anyway.

2) Don't bother creating a custom Windows 8.1 installer CD just to get past the Windows Activation page. Just enter a generic key. Microsoft presumably make these keys available to tech support folk. (Doesn't activate Windows, it just allows it to be installed).

 

[GreenAnt]

There seems to be a problem activating Windows 10 this time.

I've installed Windows 10 a number of times on this computer (on a wiped hard-disk with partitions deleted, and with an offline user account, no sign in to microsoft) and the digital license was always automatically found.

But after installing Windows 8 (which wasn't activated) and then upgrade to Windows 10, it's saying it's not activated.

"We can't activate Windows on this device because we can't connect to your organisations activation server. Make sure that you're connected to your organisations network and try again. If you continue having problems with activation, contact your oganisations support person"

Have I made a mess of the Windows licensing?

I tried Bing browser and it does have an internet connection.

 

[Deleted member 14196]

you should not require a license with windows 10

you just can't change wallpaper and use dark mode until you activate it.

try the code from windows 8 or call MS and tell them you have a legal Win8 license, they will probably activate it for you

do not use generic or otherwise stolen keys either, MS can disable them any time, even if successfully used today

 

[GreenAnt]

you should not require a license with windows 10

you just can't change wallpaper and use dark mode until you activate it.

try the code from windows 8 or call MS and tell them you have a legal Win8 license, they will probably activate it for you

do not use generic or otherwise stolen keys either, MS can disable them any time, even if successfully used today

I'm fixing this for someone and don't want to leave it without a license.

I don't have a Win 8 key. It only has a Win 7 key (no idea what that is, sticker is very faded) and a Win 10 digital license.

Up to this point (with clean installs of Windows 10, partitions wiped) the digital license appeared automatically.

But installing Windows 8 (no license) and upgrading from that has thrown a spanner in the works.

This could be because I installed an OEM Windows 8 using a custom installer instead of using a regular installer with a Windows 8 Home generic key. (needed with Windows 8 to get past the activation page).

Actually, the custom installer does state "retail". So I would have expected it to install as a normal Windows 8 Home.

Here is the ei.cfg file I added to the Windows 8 ISO.
_____
[EditionID]
Core
[Channel]
Retail
[VL]
0

Is there a mistake with the Windows versions?

Current installation of Windows 10 shows "Edition: Windows 10 Home" which is correct. So this is all about the Windows 8 side of things I suppose?

 

[GreenAnt]

I've returned the laptop now. In case it's useful for anyone else I'll mention what happened. Thanks for your help guys.

download and run Driverview - http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/driverview.html

All it does is looks at drivers installed; it won't install any (this is intentional as 3rd party driver updaters often get it wrong)

When you run it, go into view tab and set it to hide all Microsoft drivers, will make list shorter.

I think you can export from it. Or just take screenshots

win 10 will use the drivers if its updated from win 8. It wouldn't let you install them after you are on 10 though.
Not sure about compatibility mode, I know it has one of those itself...

Once a PC has had win 10 on it, it always can. The licence was converted to a 10 licence the 1st time you used it.

I don't know how many updates you would need in 8 to be at right spot. I never used that OS.

I saved the driver list to a text file and compared a fresh install of Windows 10 to a Windows 10 upgraded from Windows 8. A file diff showed no sign that Windows 10 had brought any drivers from Windows 8. The whole Windows 8 installation had been parked into a temporary Windows backup directory which supposedly gets automatically deleted after a week, and there were no signs that Windows 10 had dipped into it for drivers.

Also, even though Windows 10 was installed, along with a digital license on the system, it said it wasn't licensed! The upgrade from Windows 8 (unregistered) had changed things somehow. So I reinstalled Windows 10 fresh and this time the digital license took effect. So even though a digital license exists for a currently installed Windows, the history also plays a part!