Windows 10: Permissions Completely Borked After Using Main Drive in External USB

Hi everyone. This deals with Windows 10 Pro x64 latest version fully updated. I was going on holiday, and was taking my small laptop. I had a lot of files on my main desktop computer drive where Windows is installed (500gb Western Digital SSD) and chucked it into an external USB encloser. When I connected the external encloser to my laptop it said when I tried to open the main folder "you don't currently have permission to access to this. Click to permanently get access to this" which I did and then could access the entire drive and see the contents of it.

Fast forward to now when I returned home, I put the SSD back into my desktop, it boots OK but everything doesn't work correctly anymore. When I click the start button it says "Your start menu isn't working. We'll try to fix it the next time you sign in".
When I try to open a simple Microsoft Word document I opened dozens of times from my desktop, it says "Your AutoCorrect file, blah blah blah could not be saved. The file may be read-only, or you may not have the permission to modify the file."

When I try to open a simple PDF I've opened dozens of times, I get "Adobe Acrobat Reader cannot open inside an AppContainer in Protected Mode due to an incompatibility with your system configuration. Would you like to proceed?
1. Open Reader with the AppContainer disabled inside Protected Mode
2. Do not open Reader due to the AppContainer system incompatibility

And pretty much most other programs are completely screwed up. My taskbar has mostly blank icons now. I did not modify the contents of the boot drive in anyway, only granted permissions for my laptop to access and see the contents of it. It seems the permissions are COMPLETELY screwed up on my main C Drive and I can no longer use this computer properly. Is there anyway I can go back to what it was without doing a clean reinstall? Or somehow disable all the garbage and completely useless security permissions that only serve to take away control from the end user and give me problems like this? I can't even open Settings because my Start menu doesn't work anymore! Any help would be really appreciated!!

:)

 

Is there can a external ssd drive be used as the main OS drive?

Hi Robert,

We don't recommend using an external SSD as the main OS drive. You can use an external SSD as the main OS drive, but you need to configure the BIOS of your computer for it to boot the OS from the external SSD. We suggest contacting your computer manufacturer
for assistance on configuring the BIOS of your computer.

Let us know if you need anything else. We're here to help.

 

External drive

Hi Richard,

There are several factors that can cause your external drive to not read DVDs even though the system is recognizing the device. This could be caused by a driver that needs to updated or corrupted files. For us to resolve your concern, kindly answer the questions
below:

• Just to confirm, the device that is not working properly is a external DVD optical drive?
• Were there any recent changes or updates installed on your computer?
• Have you tried to plug the external drive to a different port on your computer?

As a initial recommendation, we suggest that your run the built in troubleshooter in Windows 10. Kindly refer to the steps below:

• Type “Troubleshooting” in the Search bar and press Enter.
• Click on “View All” in the top left corner.
• This will display the list of troubleshooters which are built-in in the computer. You can click on
  Hardware and Devices from the list and you can run the troubleshooter.

This will check for common errors that affect hardware on your computer and attempts to correct them.

We look forward to your response after completing the steps.

 

External hard drive not recognised

Thanks for this. I've done what you suggested and been through all the steps mentioned in the article. The hard drive works fine on a Mac computer, and I've managed to copy the information on it. It must be a Surface issue so I'll try to get a chat line tomorrow.