Woody_123066,

Yes, it's normal (and rather unsatisfying).

if you copy the I386 directory fro your CD to the C:\ and adjust the path in the registy it will not ask you for the cd again.

Woody,
Open the Event Viewer. Click System in left pane. Look at right pane in Source column for 2 entries on date you ran sfc that are marked "Windows File Protection". Double click each one. First one should say "Windows File Protection file scan was started", and other should (hopefully) say "Windows File Protection file scan completed successfully."

If there were any problems or errors you'll instead see one or more that read something like:
"The system file c:\program files\microsoft frontpage\version3.0\bin\fp98swin.exe could not be copied into the DLL cache.The specific error code is 0x000004c7 [The operation was canceled by the user.]. This file is necessary to maintain system stability."

Hopefully you'll only see the 2 good ones. ;)

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 07-07-2005 06:31 PM

Thanks for the viewer tip. I checked it, and sure enough, it made some changes it didn't tell me about.

Let me post them because it claimed the same file had a bad signature and it replaced it with different verisons.

At 3:26:30 PM today it saved this in the event viewer:

Windows File Protection scan found that the system file c:\windows\system32\drivers\otcsercb.sys has a bad signature. This file was restored to the original version to maintain system stability. The file version of the system file is 1.6.1.4.

RoHe,

"What happens if an MS hotfix changes (updates) a system file but sfc decides to restore a previous version from the CD?"

The updated version of the system file is written into C:\Windows\system32\dllcache, which is where SFC looks first for replacements.

Woody,
Not sure I'll ever understand one-tenth of what sfc does or why.

Wonder if sfc replaced the 'bad' file version 1.6.1.4 with the identical version using a backup copy in c:\I386, decided it didn't like that one either, and then found the older version 1.5.2.0 on the CD.

On my 8400 with XPpro SP2, version 1.05.02 is compressed in c:\I386\driver.cab and there's an expanded copy in c:\windows\lastgood(2)\system32\dllcache. Don't know why I don't have it in c:\windows\system32\drivers\ where sfc wanted to put it on your system. Hmmmm...now look what you've done to me! :(

sfc has always worried me. What happens if an MS hotfix changes (updates) a system file but sfc decides to restore a previous version from the CD? Does that then defeat the hotfix?

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 07-07-2005 07:51 PM

Denny,
Thanks for responding to my concern about sfc. But what happens if, for some reason, a hotfix system file isn't in c:\windows\system32\dllcache or is also corrupted? Or, in my case, there's no such folder on this 8400 with XPpro SP2 and all hotfixes (supposedly) installed, and listed by Add/Remove and Belarc Advisor...?

And what about Woody's case where it appears sfc didn't like the file with higher version number and reverted to one with lower version number?

Ron

Message Edited by RoHe on 07-08-2005 09:15 AM