Windows 10: The disk is offline because of policy set by an administrator

The error occurs majorly in two scenarios. First is when restoring a guest virtual machine from a snapshot, and second when there are same disk identifiers when connecting an additional disk to the system. In this post, we will share [...]

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this disk is offline because of a policy set by an administrator

This is new : )

Plugged in an external 2TB USB drive that I have had no problem accessing before. No new updates no new programs installed since the last time I used it. Hard Disk Sentinel does show bad sectors but the app has been showing this message for over a year now and it has not changed. It still shows the exact same number of bad sectors. I thought HD Sentinel was the offending program but when I exited it no go. When I go to the taskbar I am able to easily enough eject it. My backup computer died on me a couple of weeks ago. I can not recall but the last time I think when I plugged it into a public computer it was blocked. At the moment I do not have access to another computer. When I go into disk management I can see the drive but I also see that offending message "this disk is offline..." I GOOGLED this and saw quite a bit of info but before I go scurrying around for a possible fix I thought that I would ask here first hoping that there is simple solution. I have made no changes in the GPE since the last time I plugged in the disk which showed right away in explorer and I was able to work with it. TIA.

 

this disk is offline because of a policy set by an administrator

Thanks for responding. I have seen this as well and very recently. With my 8yr old backup computer every time I loaded up the docking station with 2 Two TB storage drives nothing would come up. Frankly it took me forever to find the solution which is as you point out just run disk management and create and format pops up and then right click and add a drive letter and it pops back up in explorer. This was the first time however I saw it with my new computer (12/2017 Thinkpad p51) and I had just successfully mounted the external 2 TB USB drive just a week or so ago. Sadly when I right clicked that was when I got the message "this disk is offline because of a policy set by an administrator" and I was unable to add a drive letter to make it come back up in explorer.
Yesterday I took the drive to a public computer and it did in fact pop up in explorer so that was good news. This morning I was just about to go all Internet crazy on this b*tch when I tried plugging it in again and again I got that error message. However if you click on the first pic I uploaded it will enlarge and you see right next to "Disk 2" that error message well for whatever reason I right clicked on that red error "icon" and it asked me if I wanted to put the disk back online and I clicked you betcha and it "magically" appeared in explorer!

 

Settings can't be opened using the built-in administrator account


Hello,
Unfortunately I have the same issue as Dabz from upgrading win7 to win10.
I've tried opening settings using all the suggested methods and it will not load using my account with Administrator access nor the built-in Administrator profile. I also tried other methods not listed such as using Run. Control panel is just a stepping stone to add users in Settings.
I'm also having explorer.exe issues, which I believe is preventing Settings from loading.
Using cmd (Admin) I successfully created a new user profile [and granted admin access also using cmd (Admin)], however win10 will not allow this account to log on. win10 does not list this new user within control panel but it does in the start menu. win10 will not allow to log in or switch to the new account via the start menu either.
I can access settings in Safe Mode but this will not allow me to create a new account.
Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers