Repairing Windows Tools & Articles

For those times when we all think that it surely must be a simple thing to fix an annoying windows problem your facing than reinstalling or for those times when you forgot to take a recent full system image:

Here is a compilation of tools and articles I’ve used to try and fix some windows registry / component problems.

View ALL the hidden devices in device manager

Ghost/Hidden Network Interfaces

Repairing corrupt files using SFC (Windows 7/8)

Use the System File Checker tool to repair missing or corrupted system files

Repairing corrupt files using SFC (Windows 8 / Server 2012)

Fixing component store corruption in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012

Resetting the TCP/IP stack

How to reset TCP/IP by using the NetShell utility
Windows 7: Wifi adapter could not bind IP protocol stack to network adapter

Checking USB2/3 connection speed

Verifying USB connection speed (USB 3 or USB 2?)

Comparing registry changes

REGDIFF – compares 2 exports, compares an export and current, sorts and merges.
I found that under Windows 7 64-bit, I needed to export both versions to xml (/XML option) otherwise it threw an error regarding unknown data type. The delta it creates contains false positives, so I found it most useful to export to xml and sort the before and after and just use a text compare tool.

The WinSxS Folder aka Component Store

WinSxS Folder in Windows 7 | 8 explained – this is where windows stores different versions of the core windows components (registry, dll, sys etc files)

Fixing missing PerfMon counters

PerfMon problems - Unable to Add Counters