How to Repair Corrupted Files After Recovery in Windows 10, 8, 7

Apply to: all editions of Windows 10, Windows 8.1, Windows 8, and Windows 7, including 32-bit and 64-bit versions

Fix 1. Corrupted File Repair Software Free Download1
Fix 2. Perform a Check Disk on the Hard drive
Fix 3. Use the CHKDSK/SFC Command
Fix 4. Run CHKDSK Alternative
Fix 5. Change the File Format
Fix 6. Use an Online File Repair Tool

How Do I Fix Corrupted Files in Windows 10

File corruption occurs unexpectedly from time to time, and it is not specific to a particular file format. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, photo, video, or other media file may damage due to various reasons with showing the following error messages when you try to open it:

The file is corrupted and cannot be opened in Excel/Word
The file cannot be opened because there are problems with the contents
Cannot open the file because the extension is not valid
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable

If you happen to meet any of these file corrupted messages, try the solutions in this article to repair damaged files in Windows 10.

Fix 1. Corrupted File Repair Software Free Download to Fix Damaged Files

The most effective way to fix corrupted files is by using a file repair utility. Deep Data Recovery, a robust data recovery and data repair tool, enables you to repair and restore lost/existing corrupted photos, videos, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, or other files under all corruption scenarios.

Being an efficient file repair tool, Qiling file recovery and repair software is competent to:

Repair Files with Deep Data Recovery

Repair corrupted Excel/Word file after recovery
Repair corrupted and damaged JPEG or JPG files
Fix damaged MP4 and MOV files on Windows and Mac
Fix multiple broken files at the same time
Repair damaged files from PC, laptop, external devices, etc.

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8/7, 100% Secure

Now, download and use Qiling file repair tool to fix corrupted files in Windows 10, 8, and 7 with a few clicks.

Step 1. Launch Qiling file recovery software on your Windows computer. Select file types and click "Next" to start.

Select file types that you want to recover

Step 2. Select a disk location where the corrupted files are saved. Click "Scan" to start finding the broken files. Qiling file repair tool allows you to fix damaged documents, videos, and pictures in differnet formats.

Step 3. After scanning, you can quickly find corrupt data by file type. If you want to repair damaged Word, Excel, or PDF, select Documents and filter a specific category. For pictures and videos repair, all the common types are suppored, including JPEG, PNG, BMP, MOV, MP4, GIF, and more.

Step 4. Qiling file repair software will automatically fix broken files. You can preview the repaired files before recovery. Last, click "Recover" and save the recovered files to a different location to avoid data overwriting.

If you don't plan to install any third-party file repair software locally, you can try the fixes below to see if you can fix your corrupted file.

Fix 2. Perform a Check Disk on the Hard drive

If there are file system errors on your hard drive that cause the file damage, you can scan your disk to repair corrupted files.

Step 1. Open File Explorer > right-click the HDD/SSD you want to scan > choose "Properties".

select your drive properties

Step 2. Under the "Tools" tab > click the "Check" button under the Error-checking section.

click check in the hard drive properties

Step 3. Next, you can choose to "Scan drive" if wanted or "Repair drive" if errors were found.

click scan drive to check your hard drive errors

Step 4. Wait while Error Checking scans the selected hard drive for errors. If errors were found, you may be asked to restart your computer. If no errors were found, you can close any open windows and continue using your computer normally.

Fix 3. Use the CHKDSK/SFC Command to Repair Your Files

If your hard drive has logical bad sectors, or its file system has corrupted, you can't access the files saved on it. In this case, you can use the CHKDSK utility to fix the affected disk to repair corrupted files.

Step 1. Click the Search box, type CMD. Right-click the Command Prompt and choose "Run as administrator".

run as administrators

Step 2. Type E: /f /r /x, hit the Enter. Here you can replace E with your drive letter.

After the fix, you may view your files if the damage is caused by a bad sector or corrupted file system. If not, move to the following solutions.

repair corrupted JPEG files using CHKDSK

You can also run the SFC command after using CHKDSK. SFC is short for System File Checker. This command scans all protected system files for corruption. It attempts to repair the system file by copying a cached copy of each corrupted file from the system32\dllcache folder.

Step 1. Click the Search box, type CMD. Right-click the Command Prompt and choose "Run as administrator".

Step 2. Type: sfc /scannow and hit "Enter".

run sfc scannow

This command aims to find and repair corrupt Windows system files.

Fix 4. Run CHKDSK Alternative

Qiling CleanGenius is a user-friendly computer fixing tool that is both safe and lightweight. It's a perfect alternative to CHKDSK command. Use this one-click tool to fix the damaged file system easily.

Step 1. DOWNLOAD Qiling CleanGenius on your computer and complete the installation.

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8/7, 100% Secure

Step 2. Run the software. Click "Optimization", and then choose "File Showing" .

Step 3. Select the drive with a corrupted file system. Tick the "Check and fix file system error" option and click "Execute".

Step 4. Wait the tool performs the repairing task. After that, click the "here" button to check the drive.

Fix 5. Change the File Format to fix Corrupted Files

Opening a corrupted Excel or Word file, but only to find there is no data. You can try to repair corrupted Excel or Word by saving it as another format.

Step 1. Open corrupted Word or Excel file and go to "Save As".

Step 2. Select "Web Page" from the possible file formats. Make sure that the whole Excel file is selected and then click "Save".

Step 3. Find the saved file and right-click on it, select "Open with" > "Microsoft Office Excel".

Step 4. If the file can be opened usually, go to "Save As" and choose an Excel format .xls or .xlsx. Then, the corrupted Excel file will be recovered.

repair corrupted Excel by saving to other formats

Fix 6. Use an Online File Repair Tool

You still have the chance to repair damaged files with an online file repair tool. This kind of file repair approach is easy to operate, generally, you just need to upload the damaged file, perform the repair, and then download fixed documents.

However, this type of software has the following disadvantages in common:

File data privacy cannot be guaranteed. Others may save the file you upload for other purposes.
The repair speed is generally slow.
The cost is expensive. After testing, most online repair tools are charged by quantity, e.g., $10 for a document

Therefore, think twice before you fix corrupted files with an online tool. If you would like to try, OnlineFile.Repair is a nice one.

repair corrupted files with online tool

To Sum Up

There are six methods in all to help you repair corrupted files in Windows 10. If you don't want to use any extra tools, you can try the built-in Windows utilities for free, such as the disk check tool, CHKDSK, or SFC /scannow command to fix damaged files from previous versions.

While if these methods aren't feasible or you like to resort to professional file repair software, Qiling file repair tool is a great option. Integrated with advanced file repair technology, it can repair any data file quickly and effectively.

Furthermore, Deep Data Recovery has a high reputation in the field of data recovery. It is good at emptied recycle bin recovery, deleted recovery, formatted recovery, lost partition recovery, RAW recovery, OS crash recovery, virus attack recovery, and more.

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8/7, 100% Secure

What Causes a File Corruption?

There are various reasons why files become corrupted. These include:

Power outage, computer crash, or bugs in the operating system may lead to files corrupted
If the hard drive or the storage device has some bad sectors.
The presence of malware and viruses on your storage device
A Bad update or unexpected computer shutdown
Files are stored in memory in a cluster

Knowing these causes, we can effectively avoid files getting corrupted or damaged in these aspects.

FAQs About How to Fix Corrupted Files in Windows 10

Here are a few questions related to how to repair corrupted files. If you also have any of these problems, you can find the methods here.

What is a corrupted file?

Corrupted files are files that suddenly become inaccessible or unreadable. There are several reasons why a file gets corrupted, like virus infection, power outage, hard drive problems, and so on. When you try to open a damaged file, you will see an error that says something like, "The file is corrupt and cannot be opened" or "The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable".

How can I repair corrupted Word files?

Qiling Data Recovery can repair damaged Word/Excel/PowerPoint documents, corrupted videos, or crashed JPEG/JPG during the preview process. If your Word document becomes corrupted because of a virus attack, hard drive error, OS crash, this method can repair your word file effectively.

Step 1. Launch Deep Data Recovery, and then scan the missing or damaged word files.

Step 2. Find the damaged files through the filter, file path, search, etc. This program will automatically repair corrupted and damaged files.

Step 3. Click Recover to save the repaired word files to a safe location.

How can I recover corrupted files for free?

You can use Qiling free file recovery and repair tool to recover corrupted files up to 2GB in simple steps: scan > preview and repair > restore.

How can I repair corrupted JPEG files?

Try Qiling file repair tool to fix corrupted JPEG or JPG pictures caused by bad sectors on hard disk, operating system bugs, system file damage, etc.. It can recover thumbnails of severely damaged JPEG files from PC, laptop, external hard drive, SD card, USB flash drive, and other storage devices.