Automatically Detect And Fix Common Maintenance Problems In Windows 7 Using Microsoft Fix It

Posted by dkszone on September 6, 2010

Microsoft Fix It service is a Microsoft Support initiative towards a better and consistently performing PC. Through Fix It service, Microsoft has offered plenty of troubleshooting tools for Windows 7. One among them is the Fix It tool for automatically detecting and fixing common maintenance problems such as desktop shortcuts problem, startup entries problem, volume error problem, system date problem etc.

According to Microsoft, the tool fixes following problems in Windows 7 PC:

1. Problems with desktop shortcuts and icons

  • Shortcuts on the desktop don’t work or are broken
  • Desktop icons are broken or have not been used in 3 months
  • Startup items don’t work or are broken

2. System maintenance tasks

  • Free up disk space by repairing disk volume errors such as bad sectors, lost clusters, cross-linked files and directory errors
  • Free up disk space by removing error reports and troubleshooting history older than 1 month
  • Set the correct system time and synchronize system clock with the time server

3. You receive the following errors:

  • Windows update error 0x80072F8F
  • The item that this shortcut refers to has been deleted

HOW TO RUN AND USE THIS TOOL?

1. Visit Microsoft Support Site and click on “Run” button in it.

URL: http://support.microsoft.com/gp/system_maintenance_for_windows

run

2. Save the file (Mats_Run.maintenance) and then double-click on it.

3. The tool will download some supported services. You need to have internet connection.

installing-automated-troubleshooting-services

4. After the scan is complete, the tool will present you with two options for troubleshooting including automated apply of fixes and manual review method before applying fixes. Go with your choice or simply choose the first option “Detect problems and apply the fixes for me (Recommended).

scan-complete

If it finds any problems, it fixes them and gives you a report of fixed items. Unfortunately this time our test PC didn’t have any problems, hence we couldn’t give a screen-shot of fixes!