Question

Difficulty: HardMicrosoft Command-Line Tools

A technician boots a non-responsive Windows workstation into the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE) Command Prompt to repair system file corruption on the main Windows installation volume (drive D:). Place the following administrative command-line steps in the correct chronological order to safely check disk integrity, restore the offline component store, and repair system files.

  1. 1Identify and verify the assigned drive letter for the target Windows OS partition using directory or disk utility commands.
  2. 2Execute chkdsk D: /f to scan and repair underlying volume filesystem errors.
  3. 3Execute dism /image:D:\ /cleanup-image /restorehealth to repair the offline Windows component store (WinSxS).
  4. 4Execute sfc /scannow /offbootdir=D:\ /offwindir=D:\windows to scan and replace damaged system binaries against the restored store.

Answer

The correct order of operations is: first, identify the OS drive letter in WinRE; second, run chkdsk D: /f to fix filesystem errors; third, execute dism /image:D:\ /cleanup-image /restorehealth to restore the component store; fourth, run sfc /scannow /offbootdir=D:\ /offwindir=D:\windows to repair system binaries.
Systematic offline troubleshooting requires identifying the active OS volume letter, ensuring disk filesystem stability with chkdsk, repairing the servicing repository via dism /image:D:\ /cleanup-image /restorehealth, and finally replacing corrupt system files using sfc with /offbootdir and /offwindir flags.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Determine drive letter assignment for the Windows installation volume in WinRE.
The target volume is verified as drive D:.
WinRE dynamically assigns partition letters that may differ from standard online drive letters.
2
Run chkdsk D: /f.
Volume sector anomalies and file record errors on drive D: are resolved.
Running image repair tools on a corrupted filesystem can crash utilities or lead to incomplete repairs.
3
Run dism /image:D:\ /cleanup-image /restorehealth.
The offline WinSxS component store on drive D: is scanned and restored to health.
SFC depends on a healthy component store to serve as the reference source for corrupt file replacement.
4
Run sfc /scannow /offbootdir=D:\ /offwindir=D:\windows.
Protected Windows system files on drive D: are scanned and restored using clean files from the component store.
With the reference component store repaired, SFC can successfully replace corrupted system binaries.

Key Concept

Offline Windows Command-Line System Repair Sequence
Rate this question