command line expand overwritten

Question

[Not sure if this is the right place for this question, if not, please correct me!]

I am having frequent BSOD issues with my graphics card driver. On closer inspection, it turns out there is an issue with a driver file called atikmpag.sys - an issue that other people have apparently faced many times before. I found a workaround on this website. In short, the thing I need to do is expand the driver file atikmpag.sy_ to atikmpag.sys. This should be done with the following command line (I have put the file atikmpag.sy_ in a folder called C:\test):

cd C:\test
expand atikmpag.sy_ atikmpag.sys

however, when I execute those two lines, I get a LOT of beeping noises accompanied with the following screen:

After some time, the command line will start responding again and I am left with the message 'atikmpag.sys: no such file or directory' (see image below)

Upon running expand /? I found that the /? flag was not recognized by command prompt. I needed to call expand --help, which showed me the following screen:

It seems to me that I probably installed some program that overwrote the standard windows expand command prompt function and replaced it with some tab-removal functionality. Now my question is: how can I restore/access the original windows function? Or alternatively: is there any other way I can extract the original atikmpag.sy_ file to atikmpag.sys?

Answer 1

You're using the wrong expand (the one which expands tabs to spaces, which makes no sense since this is a binary).

You should be using the one from the windows directory, C:\Windows\System32\expand.exe. If you've lost it try sfc /scannow if you haven't already, or if you need it quick grab it from one of the internet's download sites, and hope it's not riddled with malware.