Bill Kirwin

And how to fix it….

So recently, I came across a Windows 10 workstation that was able to get online, but would not access any network resources, file shares or printer shares.

After a few minutes of checking system logs for errors, I happened to notice that the Workstation service would not start, and that the startup string for the service had been truncated, and now looked something like this:

Note, the startup string for it should look like this:

I ran system file checker, which identified and corrected corrupt files – note in 20 years, this is the first time I’ve seen SFC actually report a problem. Alas, as expected, this did not resolve the issue.

To correct the problem, I had to invoke Powershell with administrative rights, and then run the following command to restore the service to an operational state: