Cheers each. sfc/ SCANNOW found errors beyond me so I'll pass it on to my computer man and let it rest as unfixed for now. On holiday next week so won't be using it anyway. Thanks guys.
Bummer.
For the record, in almost all cases, if the System File Checker's automated "fixing" routines can't correct the issues (and, frankly, even sometimes when it says it can) the best solution is to nuke the system and reinstall Windows from scratch.
If SFC finds errors it means, basically, that something has corrupted or altered (in an illegitimate way) the
operating system's files on the computer. That's not good at all. And, worse, if it corrupted or altered the OS's files (which are heavily protected) there's a decent chance it also corrupted some of
your files, but there's no way to test for that (with currently prevalent filesystems, anyway). The issue could have been caused by many things, but probably the most common are:
* Malware infections.
* An install of a system patch or upgrade gone horribly awry.
* Hardware failure (RAM or disk, most likely, though it can really be a huge pile of things)