After a fresh install of Windows 10 I had to get .Net 3.5. That’s normally a simple step of activating a Windows feature. However, this time it did not work. Instead of .Net 3.5 I only got the error 0x800F081F.
According to the documentation, the installer could not find the installation source. But the problem persisted even when I got the full installer for the .Net Framework. I had no intention to reinstall my machine again and instead searched for a solution that did not depend on creating my own ISO image with the Windows Media Creation tool.
Use PowerShell
It took my a while to find this great blog post by Kapil Arya. His proposed solution was simple and quickly done. All I had to do were these steps:
- Download and open ISO image of the installation DVD for Windows 10
- Copy the whole folder X:\sources\sxs to C:\temp\sxs
- Start PowerShell as administrator and run this command:
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dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:c:\temp\sxs /LimitAccess |
Instead of reinstalling my Windows 10, I needed only a bit of PowerShell and .Net 3.5 works as it should.
The usual way
For all the readers who don’t have my problem and just want to install .Net 3.5, you can do these simple steps:
- Open the Programs and Features application
- Click on “Turn Windows features on or off”:
- Select .Net Framework 3.5
- Click on OK to install it
That’s all it takes to get .Net 3.5 working when there is no error 0x800F081F.
Conclusion
The simplest things can take a long time. Make sure that you use Google before you throw away your system and start reinstalling it.