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APC and its readers can be one giant helpdesk. If you have a technical problem, chances are one of us can solve it.
WINDOWS QUICKLY RESET FOLDER PERMISSIONS
I’ve messed up user permissions on a personal folder. What’s the easiest way to fix this, please? Carl Oswald We’ve found a handy graphical tool that makes the process easy, without you having to delve into the command prompt. Download the tool from http:// lallouslab.net/downloads/ ResetPermission.zip, then follow the step-by-step guide here to use it.
Right-click ResetPermission.zip and choose ‘Extract All…’. When prompted, enter the password ‘lallouslab’. If your security software blocks the tool, restore it from the quarantine. It’s safe to run. Double-click resetpermission. exe to get started.
Click ‘Choose folder:’ to browse to the folder you wish to perform the reset on. Be sure to avoid root directories and system folders (use the Windows Repair Tool – www.bleepingcomputer.com – to fix system permissions issues).
File permissions are a complicated beast, and it’s easy to get things wrong. Don’t compound your original problem; take a fail-safe backup of the existing permissions by clicking the Advanced button and choosing ‘Backup permissions’.
In most cases, the default tick boxes should be left alone, but if you’d like your user account to take ownership of the files – which should increase your access to them – then tick ‘Take files ownership’. Click ‘Go’ when you’re ready to proceed. Cat Ellis
HARDWARE DISAPPEARING SOLID-STATE DRIVE
Every now and then – there’s no pattern – my second solid-state drive (SSD) will disappear completely. I’ve pointed my user folders to this drive, so Windows hangs for around five minutes during loading before landing me on a blank desktop. Sometimes a reboot brings the drive back, but other times I have to open it up and remove and reconnect the drive cable. Is this a dying drive? John Stevens After some basic checks suggested the drive should be in good health, we asked John to check the connection. He swapped out the cable, but the problem returned again. He then discovered that the cable no longer clipped into place on the drive, suggesting the connector may be the issue. The only solution here to keeping the drive going is to house it in an external enclosure where it’s pushed directly into the SATA interface and screwed in place, so the connection can’t wiggle loose. John will, of course, have to replace the drive internally with a new drive, but at least the old one will enjoy a new lease of life – once the data’s moved across to his new drive, he can use it as a backup or wipe it for some other use. Nick Peers
DATA LOST PARTITION
I recently ‘lost’ half my hard drive. It’s 1TB in size, but only shows as 500GB – it was partitioned into two drives (C and F), but only the C drive is currently showing up. I’ve tried various recoveries I found online with no results – do you have any pointers? Fredrick Bate Hopefully this is just a case of a garbled partition table – the F drive is still there, with your data safe and sound, just out of reach. There are several partition recovery tools on the market, but you’ll find partition recovery tools built into many free partition managers, such as MiniTool Partition Wizard Free ( www. partitionwizard.com/freepartition-manager.html). Launch the program and run the Partition Recovery wizard – select your disk and let it scan to see if it can find and restore the partition. If this fails, use the free version of DMDE ( https:// dmde.com/) to see if the partition can be seen, allowing you to copy data from the drive – we recommend running a full disk check before attempting to do anything else with the drive, such as creating a new partition in the empty space to copy your recovered data back to. Rob Mead-Green
WINDOWS ADD TABS TO FILE EXPLORER
I frequently work with three or four folder windows open – is there some way to collect these in a single tabbed window, like you can with tabs in Google Chrome? Jack Merry
There are several tabbed explorer programs out there – the best ones integrate with File Explorer rather than replace it. One such hidden gem is QTTabBar. from QuizoApps. Read the step-by-step guide here to find out how to use it.
Head to https://qttabbar.wikidot. com and download ‘QTTabBar ver 1038’. Extract the contents of the ZIP file, then double-click QTTabBar.exe to install it. Next, follow the prompts, log out or restart the Windows Explorer process in Task Manager.
By default, the new tab bar is disabled – Windows 7 users should select View > Toolbars > QTTabBar to enable it; Windows 8.1 and 10 users need to activate it via the Options drop-down menu on the View tab of the Ribbon.
Once enabled, tabs appear beneath File Explorer’s Address bar in Windows 8.1 and 10 – these work in the same way they do in your web browser. Click ‘+’ to select a new folder, then drag and drop items between tabs to move or copy them.
Roll your mouse over a folder or ZIP file and you will see a downward arrow – click this to browse the folder or file’s contents via a drop-down menu. Other extras in QTTabBar include being able to set up split-screen windows and group related tabs together. Cat Ellis
EMAIL HELP WITH MOVING THUNDERBIRD PROFILE I back up my PC using Acronis TrueImage, but find I lose several days of emails each time I have to restore a recent backup. I’ve set up a second drive partition for my data – can you help me transfer my Thunderbird emails to this partition, so they’re not lost when Windows has to be rolled back? Colin Travis
This is a relatively straightforward – if convoluted – process that involves moving your entire Thunderbird profile folder to a new drive, then pointing Thunderbird to it – the upside is all changes to your profile aren’t lost when you restore Windows, but remember to back up the profile folder separately.
First, locate your Thunderbird profile: press Win-R, type %appdata%\ Thunderbird\Profiles and press [Enter] to locate it – you should see a folder with ‘.default’ at its end, which is your profile folder. Create a Thunderbird folder on your data drive, and then copy this ‘.default’ folder to it. Now press Win-R again, but this time type thunderbird -profilemanager and press [Enter.] Now click ‘Create Profile…’, enter a suitable name and click ‘Choose Folder…’ to select the profile folder on your data drive. Click ‘OK’, verify that it’s the correct path and click Finish, then select Start.
If folders – and possibly even the inbox – are invisible, select Tools > Account Settings > Server Settings and then click Browse to update the location. NICK PEERS WINDOWS PROBLEM WITH PC POWER SETTINGS I can never get my desired power setting on my PC – setting the display to never turn off. Every time I restart or shutdown, Windows reverts to the default 15 minutes. I’ve tried fixing system files and various settings in the Registry, and also created new profiles, none of which have held. A reinstall failed, too. Do you have any suggestions that might help? Arvin Gilman
Some people have reported this issue with selected third-party apps – HD Tune ( www.hdtune.com/) is one such culprit, and Arvin wondered if IOLO System Mechanic ( www.iolo.com/
products/system-mechanic/) might be the culprit here – he’d removed it prior to upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10). Some security programs are also known to block changes to power settings. In Arvin’s case, however, he was able to fix his problem by deleting the three default power plans. To do this, first create a custom plan under Power Options and then make sure it’s set as the active plan. Next, right-click the Start button and choose Command Prompt (Admin). When it’s opened, type the following command: powercfg /list
This lists all plans – your custom plan should marked with an asterisk to indicate it’s active. To delete the others, highlight the long alpha-numeric GUID next to the Balanced plan and press Ctrl-C, then type powercfg -delete and press Ctrl-V to paste in the plan’s GUID. Press Enter and then repeat for the other two default power plans in Windows 10 – ‘High performance’ and ‘Power saver’). Rob Mead-Green WINDOWS DESKTOP.INI FILE KEEPS OPENING AT STARTUP After installing the Windows 10 April 2018 Update a ‘desktop.ini’ file keeps opening in Notepad when my PC starts. I’ve traced the file to the Startup folder – I had to tick ‘Hidden items’ on the View tab in File Explorer to see it – but any attempts to delete the file have resulted in an ‘access denied’ error. Can you help? Don Baxter
Don had attempted to access the file’s permissions by right-clicking the ‘desktop.ini file’, then choosing the Properties > Security tab, but no permissions for the file were shown. Luckily, Don was able to resolve his problem by using a file unlocker tool to delete the offending file.
If the same thing is happening on your PC following the April 2018 Update, then download and install IObit Unlocker from www.iobit.com/en/ iobit-unlocker.php – launch the app and then drag the offending ‘desktop. ini’ file from its File Explorer window into the program and click the dropdown arrow next to the Unlock button, then select ‘Unlock & Delete’ to remove it; if necessary, tick the ‘Forced Mode’ box first.
Once done, reboot your PC and while the file will still be recreated, it won’t open at startup anymore. Mayank Sharma