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After launching the sfc /scannow resource checker from a command prompt or a batch file, is there any way to cancel the process or does the process have to be left to complete?

In Windows XP, sfc /cancel would allow this. However it does not appear to be the case in Windows 7.

I have tried tasklist hoping to find the image name and then use taskkill to kill it, but I cannot identify the sfc /scannow process from the list.

Can anyone tell me which is the correct process to kill? Or is there another way to cancel the sfc /scannow?

EDIT:

To be clear: Ctrl+C only ends the command prompt readout but NOT the process. This can be seen as trying to run another sfc /scannow after Ctrl+C gets the response Another servicing or repair operation is currently running.

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2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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I think this might be a bad idea. Also I think your method of verifying it has stopped might be wrong.

On my computer I ran sfc /scannow. Once it had started I opened another cmd prompt and ran taskkill /IM sfc.exe /T /F. This killed the sfce process and it's child process. I verified this by watching the performance tab of task manager (I am on Windows 10) and seeing that disk activity dropped back down to 0.

I tried running `sfc /scannow' again and it said another operation is running but I suspect that is because sfc marked somewhere that it was starting and never got to unmark that because I terminated it forcefully. Hopefully that will resolve after a reboot.

In summary taskkill /IM sfc.exe /T /F will kill running processes named sfc.exe (/IM sfc.exe), kill child processes spawned by that sfc.exe (/T) and do so forcefully (/f).

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  • "because sfc marked somewhere " found this solution "dism.exe /image:C:\ /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions"....superuser.com/a/608543/40928
    – Moab
    May 5, 2016 at 16:56
  • @Moab Nice, but DISM.exe will not access image:C:\ while windows is running. Potentially we could use the dism.exe /online command instead, but /cleanup-image /revertpendingactions gets "error 50 - this operation is only supported against an offline image" and does not cancel the sfc mark.
    – Matthew
    May 5, 2016 at 18:48
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If you have the "another servicing or repair operation is currently running" message

2 solutions :

  • Reboot

  • Restart TrustedInstaller service : 

    Get-Service TrustedInstaller | Restart-Service
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