Windows 10: CCleaner broke windows. Reinstalled fresh copy & now file PC boots/ file explorer/windows...

I've run CCleaner once a month or so for over 2 years and had no issues, but yesterday I ran it and then restarted my PC. The Windows boot screen idled for a few minutes and then went to black.

- I tried to let the windows repair tool run, but it didn't work.
- I tried to restore a system restore point, but it was unable to do so.

Eventually, I just reinstalled a fresh copy of windows and formatted the old SSD that Windows was previously installed on.

I have 2 SSD and 1 HDD and have had no problems with them. But, after the fresh install, the PC wouldn't recognize them. One SSD is 128g with the operating system and a few programs and the other SSD and HDD are 500g and mostly used for files and a few other programs. I kept getting two errors:

- Access Denied
- You don't have permission to change settings for this drive

I am on an admin account and have tried the following steps:

- I ran disk manager and was able to eventually convert the HDD to a simple drive and access it.
- The 2nd SSD will not convert, open, or even allow me to right click and view properties.
- The 2nd SSD shows up on the device manager, the disk manager, and under My PC. However, it has 0.0 MB of space and has no idea what the max space is.
- I can't seem to convert it, open it, or review/change the "Properties" option of the second SSD. I'd prefer not to format the whole thing.

In addition to all of this, the file explorer/windows folder navigation is now significantly slower than it used to be. I installed all the same drivers from before, made no hardware changes of any kind, and used the same boot USB from before.

The machine also boots up significantly slower than before. Previously, it took about 2-3 seconds from the successful boot beep to being able to click things on my desktop. Now, it is closer to 10 seconds and idles/loads on the windows boot screen and login screen.

I'm stumped about how to access my drive without formatting it or why the boot/navigation in Windows in roughly 3-4x slower than before.

Thank you.

:)

 

Windows 10 Tweaks

Pressing “Windows+Pause Break” (it’s up there next to scroll lock) opens the “System” Window.

Windows 10: In the new version of Windows, Explorer has a section called Quick Access. This includes your frequent folders and recent files. Explorer defaults to opening this page when you open a new window. If you’d rather open the usual This PC, with links to your drives and library folders, follow these steps:

• Open a new Explorer window.
• Click View in the ribbon.
• Click Options.
• Under General, next to “Open File Explorer to:” choose “This PC.”
• Click OK

credit to Lifehacker.

 

Some files listed in Windows Explorer are blue font

I seem to have run out of room on a Windows XP Pro system. I tried to defrag but don't have but 7% room available. I looked in Windows Explorer to try to find some huge files that might be corrupt and I see a few that are listed in blue. What does that mean? I have not compressed anything on purpose. Thanks

 

Windows Missing hal.dll file , how to reinstall without reformating

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