Where are my storage-space bars?

Q

I have two laptops running Windows 10 Home. On the first laptop, when I launch File Explorer and click on This PC I see the hard drive with a bar indicating the amount of storage. On the second, I see no such bar. I find the bar useful but can’t figure out how to make it appear. Alex Hardy

A

These bars aren’t available in all File Explorer views, so check first that they’re enabled. Click the View tab, then in the Layout section choose Tiles or ‘Small icons’, for example.

If this doesn’t work, reset the folder views. Still on View tab, click the down arrow below Options followed by ‘Change folder and search options’. In the box that appears, select the View tab, then click Reset Folders (see screenshot bottom right) followed by Yes.

If the problem remains, it’s likely that the value for the bars in the Windows Registry is missing or corrupt. Back up your PC, then press Windows key+r, type regedit and press Enter. Use the left-hand pane to navigate to HKEY_ CLASSES_ROOT\DRIVE. In the righthand pane, look for a key called Tileinfo. If it’s not there, right-click the righthand pane, point to New and click String Value. As the ‘Value name’, type Tileinfo (see screenshot above) and in the ‘Value data’ field, type prop:*system. Percentfull;system.computer. Decoratedfreespace;system.volume. Filesystem then click OK. It’s important to get this string right so you may want to copy and paste it from the Pastebin page we created, at www.snipca. com/24599. If Tileinfo already exists, right-click it, choose Modify and check that ‘Value data’ exactly matches the above string. Now restart your PC.