If youve uninstalled a program in Windows Vista or 7 from Control Panel,

perhapsyouve noticed Turn Windows features on or off in the left pane. When you
click on it, the Windows Features dialog will appear asking you to Please wait and it
will start searching for a list of windows features such as games, indexing service,
internet information services (IIS) and other system components that you can turn on or
off. Vista and 7s Windows Features list is actually pretty much the same as
Add/Remove Windows Component in Windows XP. You can also run Windows Features
by typing optionalfeatures at the run dialog or command prompt.
One of the most common problems that many people are facing with the Windows
Features dialog is the window comes out empty or blank and the features list doesnt
appear. You can see please wait initially as it tries to make up a list but then it totally
blanks out.

Microsoft of course is well aware of this problem and theyve created a knowledge
base article 931712 to acknowledge the problem and also provided 2 solutions to
resolve this issue. The first method is to run the sfc /scannow command to scan all
protected system files and replace incorrect versions with the correct Microsoft versions.

If that didnt work, they recommend a System Restore.

Theres also another method on Google that claims to fix it by running the command
reg delete HKLM\COMPONENTS /v StoreDirty. We can assure you that all these
above solutions dont work. One of the only known recommended solutions that will fix
the blank Windows Feature is to re-install Windows but thats rather overkill just to fix a
blank window.
Dont worry though, because weve found a REAL fix for the empty Windows Features
problem without re-installing Windows. What weve found is that this problem is most
often caused by missing or corrupt files in a folder called
C:\Windows\Servicing\Packages. The reason why SFC or System Restore dont work is
they dont restore anything in the Packages folder and therefore miss the problem
altogether. Heres how to get your features window populated again.
1. Download the System Update Readiness Tool from Microsoft. Expand the
Download Center by using the + and download the correct version of the tool
according to your operating system. For convenience, the links to the Vista and 7
Readiness Tool are provided below.
Download
Download
Download
Download

System
System
System
System

Update
Update
Update
Update

Readiness
Readiness
Readiness
Readiness

Tool
Tool
Tool
Tool

for
for
for
for

Windows
Windows
Windows
Windows

Vista 32-bit
Vista 64-bit
7 32-bit
7 64-bit

2. Once you have finished downloading the file, close all running programs and run it,
the Readiness Tool has an extension of .msu. Click OK to install the KB****** update for
Windows. You will see that it looks as though an update is being installed, but actually
its trying to fix any problems that it finds on the system in the background using
checksur.exe. This will take a while, up to 10 or 15 minutes is possible, so be patient
and let it finish.

3. When installation has completed, click Close and restart your computer. Once
Windows has booted, try running Windows Features (optionalfeatures.exe) again and
see if the list loads into the window or not. IF not, continue to the next step.
4. Go to C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\ and open the CheckSUR.log file with notepad. The
following steps are possibly going to be a little tricky because everyone gets different
results in the log file.
5. Take note of the section that says Checking Package Manifests and catalogs in the
CheckSUR.log file. If there are errors, you will see a line starting with (f) followed by an
error code and path. If you see (fix) on the next line below the (f), it means the tool
managed to fix that particular error.

As you can see in the image above, the fourth and eighth (f) lines highlighted in pink
dont have (fix) on the next line and are therefore not fixed as the checking continues.
You need to make a note of all the unfixed MUM entries in your log file (line 4 above is
a MUM error that wasnt fixed).
6. Now you will need to manually delete the related registry keys according to what you
see in the CheckSUR.log file. Run regedit and go to the following location.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Compo
nent Based Servicing\Packages\
As an example, the fourth line error in the CheckSUR.log file above shows the file:
Package_2_for_KB2757638~31bf3856ad364e35~x86~~6.1.1.2.mum

So youll need to look for that key in the registry at the location stated above and then
delete it. There wont be a need to use the .mum extension in the registry. As long as
the whole name matches without the extension, you can delete it.

7. You WILL need to set full control permission before you can delete the corrupted
registry key. Refer to this article on how to set the permissions for the key.
After deleting all the corrupted registry keys, the Windows Features should start to show
in the list. The good thing about running the System Update Readiness Tool is it might
fix some other problems which you are probably not aware of.
Read More:https://www.raymond.cc/blog/fix-blank-or-empty-list-in-vista-turnwindows-features-on-or-off-optionalfeaturesexe/