The Adaptive Brightness setting in Windows 10 is a useful setting you can use in adjusting your computer’s brightness. It helps you get the brightness automatically based on the light around your computer. However, there are times when it does not work or it doesn’t turn off when you want it to. If this issue happened right after you update or install Windows 10, then read on as this post will give you a couple of options you can try to resolve the problem.
Option 1 – Try to run the Power Troubleshooter
The first thing you can do to resolve the issue with Adaptive Brightness is to run the Power Troubleshooter as the problem could occur due to some conflicted power settings. To use it, refer to the following steps:
Open the Windows 10 Settings panel and go to Update & Security and then to Troubleshoot.
After that, scroll down to your left-hand side and click the Power option.
From there, you should see the “Run the troubleshooter” button. Click on it to fix the problem.
Afterward, follow the next on-screen instructions that follow.
Option 2 – Try disabling or turning off the corresponding options in GPU settings
The problem might be due to the Graphics card settings. If you are using either an AMD graphics card or the HD graphics of Intel, you may have to disable the power-related options in the GPU settings. To be specific, you have to disable the Vari-Bright in AMD graphics card settings or the Display Power Saving Technology under Intel’s Graphics panel.
AMD users:
Open the AMD Radeon settings panel.
Then go to Preferences. From there, select Radeon Additional Settings.
Next, go to the Power tab and click the PowerPlay option.
You should find an option called “Enable Vari-Bright” located on your right-hand side. Remove the mark from its checkbox and then save the changes you’ve made.
Intel users:
Open the Intel Graphics and Media Control Panel from your Desktop.
Then select the Basic mode and go to the Power tab.
From there, select “On battery” as Power Source and then you’ll get the Display Power Saving Technology option. It should be set to enabled by default.
Now remove the mark from the checkbox and then save the changes you’ve made.
Option 3 – Try resetting the Power Plan defaults
You might also want to use a command-line tool to resolve the problem. This command-line tool is known as PowerCfg. It is a command utility tool that will scan your computer for 60 seconds to know its power. This tool gives detailed results in the form of an HTML report that will help you in evaluating the real cause of the battery drain issues. You can also use this tool to reset the Power Plan defaults of your computer. To use it, follow the steps below.
Open the Command Prompt as administrator.
Then type in the following command and tap Enter to execute it:
powercfg –restoredefaultschemes
After the command has been executed, restart your computer.
Option 4 – Try updating your Graphics drivers
First, boot your computer into Safe Mode.
After that, tap the Win + R keys to launch Run.
Type in devmgmt.msc into the box and tap Enter or click OK to open the Device Manager.
After that, a list of device drivers will be displayed. From there, look for the Display Adapters and click on them.
After that, right-click on each entry under the Display Adapters and select the “Uninstall Device” option from the menu.
Now restart your computer.
After restarting your computer, go to the Settings app and Check for Updates in the Windows Update section.
Note: You also have the option to go directly to the website of your graphics card manufacturers like NVIDIA, Intel, or AMD and go to the section called Drivers then check if there’s a new available update – if there is, download and install it.
Option 5 – Try disabling adaptive brightness via Registry Editor
Since you will be dealing with Registry files in this post, you need to create a System Restore point first. Once you have that covered, proceed to the following steps:
Tap the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box.
Next, type “regedit” in the field and hit Enter to open the Registry Editor.
After that, navigate to this path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREIntelDisplayigfxcuiprofilesMediaBrighten Movie
Now double click on the “ProcAmpBrightness” and set its value to “0”.
Now go to this path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREIntelDisplayigfxcuiprofilesMediaDarken Movie
From there, double click on “ProcAmpBrightness” and set the value to “0”.
Then close the Registry Editor and restart your PC and then see if the problem’s fixed or not.
A PC that turns on by itself every so often can get quite annoying. Many users have faced this problem countless times. There are lots of possible reasons why your Windows 10 PC turns on by itself, wakes up from sleep, standby, or even when it’s shut down.
To find out what exactly woke your computer, simply open Command Prompt as admin and type the following command:
powercfg –lastwake
Once you enter the command given above, it will show you the last device that woke your PC up. After that, you need to type in the next command:
powercfg –devicequery wake_armed
After entering the command, it will show you a list of all the devices that could wake your PC up. The goal in running these commands is to understand the reason what’s really causing your PC to turn on and see the reason is on the hardware level or not. Here are a couple of options you can try if your Windows 10 PC turns on by itself.
Option 1 – Try disabling Fast Startup
As you know, Windows 10 comes with a mode called Fast Startup which does not turn off the computer in the usual manner. This mode keeps your computer in a mixed state so that when you turn it on again, it will be a lot faster. However, as useful as this feature appear to be, some security experts find this an issue, for numerous reasons – for one, it can turn on your Windows 10 PC by itself. Thus, you need to disable this feature to fix the problem.
Option 2 – You need to stop the Task Scheduler from waking up your computer
There are times when the issue has something more to do with the software than hardware. It could be that you are using a Scheduled Task to get some work done on your computer at a particular time of the day or many times a day. That’s why if you really are using Task Scheduler, you need to change the Power settings of Windows to make sure that it ignores those tasks rather than deleting them instead when your computer is either on Hybrid or Standby mode.
Open the Power Options and then click on “Change Plan Settings”.
After that, make sure to choose the correct power plan and then select the “Change advanced power settings” option.
Next, look for the Sleep tree and expand it to view the “Allow Wake Timers” option and then disable it. Disabling this option will make sure that none of the program that could wake your PC up when it’s either on shutdown or sleep mode. However, this only applies to laptops.
Option 3 – Try to disable Automatic Restart
There are instances when the computer crashes and the system restarts itself. This is actually by design – when your computer has been left on standby, the computer will restart and if the program repeats, it will keep on waking your PC up.
In the Search bar, type in “system”.
Once it appears from the search results, click on it.
Next, select Advanced system settings on the left side and then go to the Advanced tab.
From there, click on Settings under Startup and Recovery.
Then unmark “Automatically Restart” and click on OK.
Option 4 – Adjust the Power Management option of both the Keyboard and Mouse
As you know, two of the culprits in waking your PC up are the keyboard and the mouse. If they’re slightly moved or hit, your PC turns on. To prevent these two from waking your computer up, you need to make some adjustments to their power management option since they have one. You can disable this option to ensure that they won’t wake your PC up unless you really want it to.
Tap the Win + X keys and then tap M to open the Device Manager and list all the hardware on your computer. From there, select your keyboard or mouse.
Next, right-click and then go to Properties and go to the Power Management tab.
In this tab, uncheck the “Allow this device to wake the computer” box.
Note: Aside from the keyboard and mouse, if you are also using any gaming rig to play games on your computer, then you might have to disable their power options as well as they could also wake your computer. Just make sure that either the keyboard or the mouse has the ability to wake your computer up at the very least as it can be quite inconvenient to tap the Power button every time you want to turn on your computer.
Option 5 – Modify Wake On Lan
The Wake On Lan feature can bring back your computer online if it is connected to a network. This feature is useful especially when a computer wants to communicate or to send data or files to a network computer which should come online only when it’s requested. Wake On Lan is built into the hardware, i.e. network adapter so it is one of the possible reasons why your PC turns on by itself.
Tap the Win + x keys then hit M to open the Device Manager and then under the Network adapters, look for the one that was listed above. Take note that you must not change anything with the ones that are listed as Miniport.
Next, right-click and select Properties and then go to Power management and from there, uncheck the “Allow this device to wake up the computer” option. This will ensure that no PC on the network can ever wake your computer up.
Option 6 – Prevent any scheduled Windows Update and Automatic maintenance
It is also possible that the Windows Update has restarted your PC to complete the update. This depends on your active hours or a predefined schedule. AS you know Windows has a built-in Automatic Maintenance mode which wakes the computer up at the scheduled time and performs the system update. This could be one of the possible reasons why your computer turns on by itself. so to prevent any scheduled updates and maintenance, you can simply change the time for Automatic maintenance. How? Follow these steps:
Open Settings then go to Windows Update and Security >Windows Update and select Active Hours.
After that, type in “Automatic maintenance” in the search bar to change the time for Automatic maintenance.
From there, you can adjust the timing or just uncheck the “Allow scheduled maintenance to wake up my computer at the scheduled time” box.
The docking station was promised upon release of the Deck but it was pushed back and now the official statement is that it is delayed again.
Valve said in an announcement on June 1:
“Due to parts shortages and COVID closures at our manufacturing facilities, the official Steam Deck Docking Station is delayed. We’re working on improving the situation and will share more info when we have it.”
Valve
The docking station was presented at the same time as Deck itself and the whole idea was to make Steam Deck work like a laptop docking station. It has ports for USB devices, displays, and network connections that became functional the moment Deck is placed on it. Docking supports a mouse, keyboard, and external display making it an almost full PC station if needed.
Valve confirmed that its official dock station will not improve performance so while you wait for its release you can use another docking station with a USB Type-C connector.
If you were trying to open File Explorer but it suddenly stopped working and you encounter an error message that states, “An attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist”, read on as this post will guide you in fixing this problem. This problem was initially reported after the April Update and Microsoft was able to fix it right after correcting the build. However, this effort seems futile for some users as recently, some reported getting the same error when they try to open not just Windows File Explorer but also with utilities like Microsoft Management Console or MMC, Visual Studio, Task Manager, Printer, Recycle Bin, etc.
Two of the most likely causes of this error are a troublesome Windows Update and corrupted system files. Whatever the cause is, here are some suggestions you can follow to fix the “An attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist” error.
Option 1 – Try to re-register the problematic DLL file
You may have to re-register the ntdll.dll file using the regsvr32.exe before you can successfully install the program and fix the ntdll.dll file crash error. The Regsvr32 tool is a command-line utility that can be used to register and unregister OLE controls like DLL and ActiveX (OCX) control in the Windows operating system. Follow the steps below to use it.
Open Command Prompt as admin from the WinX menu.
Next, type the following commands in the elevated Command Prompt and hit Enter to execute the command. This will re-register the affected DLL file using the Windows operating system tool, regsvr32.exe.
exe /[DLL file]
exe [DLL file]
Note: Replace “[DLL file]” with the name of the DLL file that was pointed out in the error.
After you execute the given commands, you should see a message saying, “DllRegisterServer in vbscript.dll succeeded” if the Regsvr32 tool was able to run successfully. After that, try to install the program again and see if it now works.
Option 2 – Replace the DLL file from a trusted source
First, you need to get the new DLL file from another computer with preferably the same file version number.
After that, you need to boot your PC into Safe Mode and navigate to the paths listed below and then replace the file using a USB drive or other external storage devices.
x86: This PC > C:/Windows/System32
x64: This PC > C:/Windows/SysWOW64
Next, type “cmd” in the Cortana search box and right-click on Command Prompt, and select “Run as administrator” to open it with administrator privileges.
Now type the “regsvr32 ntdll.dll” command and hit Enter.
Restart your PC and check if the error is now fixed.
Option 3 – Perform a System File Checker scan
The System File Checker or SFC scan could detect and automatically repair damaged system files that could be causing the “An attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist” error to pop up. SFC is a built-in command utility that helps in restoring corrupted files as well as missing files. It replaces bad and corrupted system files with good system files. To run the SFC command, follow the steps given below.
Tap Win + R to launch Run.
Type in cmd in the field and tap Enter.
After opening Command Prompt, type in sfc /scannow and hit Enter.
The command will start a system scan which will take a few whiles before it finishes. Once it’s done, you could get the following results:
Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.
Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired them.
Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them.
Option 4 – Try reverting back to the previous build of Windows
This kind of error might have something to do with a Feature Update so you can try to revert your computer to a previous build of Windows 10 as it could help you fix the problem. In this case, it would better if you refrain from updating your Windows 10 computer until this problem is completely resolved by Microsoft.
As you know, one of the useful and efficient utilities in Windows 10 is the DISM tool. It can be used with the Command Prompt command line which allows users to carry out various tasks. However, there are instances when the DISM tool could encounter some errors when you try to execute a command. One of these errors is the one that states, “The component store has been corrupted”. This kind of DISM error is due to an error in the image file.
When you encounter the DISM Error 14098 when running the DISM tool, you will see the following content in the command line:
“C:>Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /Source:c:testmountwindows /LimitAccessDeployment Image Servicing and Management toolVersion: 10.0.10586.0Image Version: 10.0.10586.0[==========================100.0%Error: 14098The component store has been corrupted.The DISM log file can be found at C:WINDOWSLogsDISMdism.logC:>”
There are several fixes you can check out to fix the DISM Error 14098, “The component store has been corrupted”. You can try to run the Restore Health command or reset the Windows Update components, or whitelist the dism.exe in your antivirus program, as well as try to uninstall any recently installed updates. Follow the options provided below for more details.
Option 1 – Run the Restore Health command in a Clean Boot State
First, you need to put your computer in a Clean Boot State.
Type in MSConfig in the Start Search to open the System Configuration utility.
From there, go to the General tab and click “Selective startup”.
Clear the “Load Startup items” check box and make sure that the “Load System Services” and “Use Original boot configuration” options are checked.
Next, click the Services tab and select the “Hide All Microsoft Services” check box.
Click Disable all.
Click on Apply/OK and restart your PC. (This will put your PC into a Clean Boot State. And configure Windows to use the usual startup, just simply undo the changes.)
Now open Command Prompt with admin privileges.
Then type and enter this command to execute it: Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth
Wait until the process is completed and restart your computer.
Note: If the Restore Health command fails, you can use the “/StartComponentCleanup parameter” by executing this command: Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup
Option 2 – Try to reset the Windows Update components
If by any chance that the second option didn’t work, resetting the Windows Update components could also help you resolve the problem. How? Refer to the following steps:
Open Command Prompt with admin privileges.
After that, type each one of the following commands and hit Enter after you key in one after the other.
net stop wuauserv
net stop cryptsvc
net stop bits
net stop msiserver
Note: The commands you entered will stop the Windows Update components such as Windows Update service, Cryptographic services, BITS, and MSI Installer.
After disabling WU components, you need to rename both the SoftwareDistribution and Catroot2 folders. To do that, type each one of the following commands below, and don’t forget to hit Enter after you type one command after the other.
Next, restart the services you’ve stopped by entering another series of commands. Don’t forget to hit Enter after you key in one command after the other.
net start wuauserv
net start cryptsvc
net start bits
net start msiserver
Close Command Prompt and reboot your PC.
Option 3 – Whitelist the “dism.exe” in your antivirus program
The DISM error 14098 might also be caused by your antivirus program which could be interfering it from running. To fix this, you have to whitelist dism.exe. How? Refer to these steps:
Open the Windows Defender Security Center from the system tray area.
Next, click the “Virus & threat protection” option and then open the “Virus and threat protection settings”.
After that, scroll down until you find the “Exclusions” and click on the “Add or remove exclusions” option.
Then click the plus button and select the type of exclusion you want to add and from the drop-down list, select Folder.
Next, navigate to this path and select the WinSxS folder: C:/Windows/WinSxS
When a User Account Control or UAC prompt, just click on Yes to proceed.
Option 4 – Try to uninstall recently installed updates
There are times when some Windows Updates affect some mechanism internally when you update your Windows 10 computer. As a result, it causes issues with other components of the operating system which could be the reason why you’re getting the DISM error 14098.
Go to Settings and select Update and Security > Windows Update.
From there, click on the “View update history” option and then click on the “Uninstall Updates” option.
This will open a new window that contains the list of installed Windows Updates.
Now right click on the Windows Update you wish to uninstall and click Uninstall.
As you already know, the Windows Sandbox is one of the new features in Windows 10. However, just like other new features, it also throws up errors and one of them is the error that states,
“Windows Sandbox failed to start, Error 0x80070057, The parameter is incorrect”.
This particular error in Windows Sandbox occurs due to its dependence on numerous components of Windows 10 that are related to Hyper-V and Virtualization mainly.
To fix this error, there are several options you can check out. You can try to install any pending updates on your Windows 10 computer, as well as make sure that all the services related to Windows Sandbox are enabled.
Option 1 – Try to run the Windows Updates to install pending updates
The first thing you can do to resolve the “Windows Sandbox failed to start, Error 0x80070057” is to check Windows Updates in your computer and see if there are any pending Windows Updates you have to install. All you have to do is go to the Windows 10 Settings app and then go to the Windows Updates section and click on the “Check for updates” button to check if there are any pending updates that are needed to be installed. This could fix the Windows Sandbox error.
Option 2 – Ensure that all the supporting processes and services are running properly
If running Windows Sandbox as an administrator didn’t fix the error, you have to ensure that all related processes for Windows Sandbox are running properly. To do that, follow these steps:
Tap the Win + R keys to launch the Run utility and type “services.msc” in the field and hit Enter to open the Windows Services Manager.
Next, from the list of services, look for the following services in the given order:
Network Virtualization Service
Virtual Disk
Hyper – V Virtual Machine
Hyper – V Host Computer Service
Container Manager Services
After you find the aforementioned services, make sure to check if they are enabled or not and then restart each one of them.
Once done, try to open the Windows Sandbox again and see if the error is fixed or not.
Error 0xc0000225 is the error that occurs on system startup, most times error just disappears all by itself but in some cases, it can be really persistent and can even cause you not to be able to enter the system that could be a really annoying thing, especially if there is some important task waiting to be finished.
In this guide, we will present you with solutions for this error and how to solve it so you can get back to work as soon as possible.
Solution if you can not log into windows due to repeating error
If an error repeats itself constantly and you are unable to boot into Windows itself you will need to prepare Windows boot USB. You can download the Microsoft media creation tool here and then use it to create a bootable USB with Windows 10.
Once the USB is done reboot your system and boot from USB. CHoose repair Windows instead of install and follow onscreen instructions.
Solution if you can log into Windows
If you can log into Windows bring up the command prompt in administrator mode and type in it SFC /SCANNOW followed by ENTER, wait for the whole operation to finish, and then reboot the system.
As you know, one of the most popular browsers these days is the Google Chrome browser. Browsing the web every day using your Chrome browser, leaves a trail of browsing history. Google uses the browser history to streamline and make the browsing experience a lot better. But there are times when Chrome users experience trouble in deleting their web browsing history, data, cookies, and cache. In this post, you will be guided through specific settings that will help you in getting rid of the browsing history in Chrome.
There are several options you can take in clearing the browsing history in Chrome. But before you try them, you can try the basic one first using the following steps:
First, click on the three-dotted icon and click on History from the menu.
Next, click on the Clear browsing data option and select “All time”.
Then select the type of history you want to delete.
After that, click on the Clear Data button.
If clearing the browsing history in Chrome the old way didn’t work, then you can try to check out the options provided below.
Option 1 – Clear the cache using the File Explorer
The first thing you can do is to clear the cache by using File Explorer. To get started, refer to these steps:
From the given locations above, replace “YOUR USERNAME” with the user profile name you use and then search for a file named “Cookies”.
Now delete its contents.
Option 2 – Reset Chrome
Resetting Chrome can also help you fix the error. This means that you will be restoring its default settings, disabling all the extensions, add-ons, and themes. Aside from that, the content settings will be reset as well and the cookies, cache, and site data will also be deleted. To reset Chrome, here’s what you have to do:
Open Google Chrome, then tap the Alt + F keys.
After that, click on Settings.
Next, scroll down until you see the Advanced option, once you see it, click on it.
After clicking the Advanced option, go to the “Restore and clean up option and click on the “Restore settings to their original defaults” option to reset Google Chrome.
Now restart Google Chrome.
Option 3 – Try to clean reinstall Chrome
There are instances when programs leave files behind after you’ve uninstalled them and the same thing can happen to Chrome so before you reinstall Chrome, you have to make sure that you have deleted the User Data folder. To do so, refer to the following steps:
Hit the Win + R keys to open the Run dialog box.
Next, type “%LOCALAPPDATA%GoogleChromeUser Data” in the field and hit Enter to open the User Data folder.
From there, rename the default folder and name it something else, e.g. “Default.old”.
After that, install Google Chrome again and check if the issue is now fixed.
So, you have finished with work, game, movie, music, email, or whatever on your PC, you look at the clock, it is late, you decide to go to sleep or outside, you click on the power button and choose shutdown. Now when a PC is shut down you feel good and go with your business but the next time you power it up you get the same error like the computer never really shut down in the first place. You wonder why and reboot it, just in case and all of the sudden error is gone.
If something similar has happened to you or you had the feeling that after shutting down your computer has not really felt like shutting it down, do not seek professional help, everything is OK with you because when you click on shut down, your computer does not really shut down!
Truth is that Microsoft has changed how to shut down works and how rebooting works in Windows with an update but has not publicly said anything about it so some users may experience this feeling of not shutdown phenomenon and might even think there is something wrong with their PC.
Why this change?
A few years ago shutdown button and option in Windows were really shutting down OS, but things changed when Microsoft wanted to increase boot-up speed. Now when that decision was made shutdown option was changed. So, what was changed? Well in order to increase Windows booting time, the shutdown will now turn off power to PC components and it will look like everything is indeed shutdown but the Windows kernel will actually be saved to a hard drive with all settings and just awaken once the PC is turned back ON. This will result in all errors and other stuff being just still present same as they were once the system was instructed to be turned off.
Rebooting your PC will now clear kernel and file from the hard drive and you will get a clean system startup without any issues tied with the kernel itself.
Workaround
Now that we know why and what change has been made to Windows logical question is can we shut down our PC at all properly? Luckily for us, the answer is yes and we will not need any external application to do it, we can still do it inside Windows itself and it is quite quick and easy.
Bringing back the old shutdown
In order to bring the old shutdown functionality of your PC please follow the instructions but be aware that by doing this your PC will boot a little bit slower since it will have to load the kernel from scratch each time computer is turned ON.
First thing is to go to settings and go to System
Then once you are inside the system, navigate to the power and sleep and click on it to select it. Once you have it selected to all the way to the right and click on additional power settings.
When you click on advanced power settings you should be led to the control panel's power options. Inside this panel click on top left link where it says Choose what the power button does.
Inside options, you will need to untick the box next to Turn on fast startup (recommended), this option has been ticked ON by the Windows update and probably without notifying you. Option means exactly what was described, it will save kernel state on the hard drive for faster boot time but sadly it can cause some issues since it will never be reloaded from 0.
If you are unable to uncheck the box click on the text beside the shield icon that says: Change settings that are currently unavailable (you will have to be logged in as administrator).
Conclusion
Altho turning off fast startup and shutting down the PC completely will for sure extend your bootup time I still believe that it is the right choice since sometimes a lot of clutter and bad things accumulate over time inside the OS and can cause a vast variety of problems in a long run. So stay safe and shut down that PC as it used to be in the past.
Random freezing in a Windows in the middle of work can be a very frustrating experience and can even cost us the loss of work. From time delays to sometimes complete crashes this behavior is something that every PC user wants to avoid or at least have very little of.
In this article, we will cover solutions on what to do and how to fix the random freezing of computers.
Run a virus scan on your computer.
Viruses and other malware can cause freezes and other issues in your computer, run a complete system scan for any kind of viruses and malware and if needed remove them.
Uninstall applications that you are not using
Besides taking your hard drive space some applications can have and require to have some services always running on your computer which can cause some issues, if an application is not needed and it is not used, removing it might solve freezing issues.
Increase RAM memory
Sometimes the problem with freezing is not a software issue, having less RAM memory than the application requires can cause the application not to work properly and it can cause freezing of the entire system since precious RAM can not be allocated to the required application.
Run system checker
Corrupted Windows system files can cause freezing of the entire system, to fix this, start the command prompt in administrator mode and type sfc /scannow
Keep running applications to a minimum
Having too many applications running in the background can drain system resources and can cause system freezes because of lack of memory. Close applications that are running in the background and keep them minimal.
Delete files and folders which you are not using
Having many files and/or folders on the hard drive can cause a lot of system resources to be wasted, from indexing size to less free space for caching. If you have files that you no longer need, removing them will free up space and can increase performance and introduce the stability.
Run memory check
Memory issues could lead to system freezing. When an application needs to write or read to a corrupted memory cluster, freezing will occur since it can not. To check memory bring up run dialog and type in ti mdsched.exe, click on restart now and let the memory test finish.
Update all drivers
Hardware issues can cause freezing of applications and having the latest drivers can make a world of difference. Make sure that you have all device drivers to the latest versions.
Optimize Disk drives and check for errors
Windows 10 has built-in tools to check hard drives for errors and to optimize them, use them in order to see if this issue is causing freezes.
Clean your registry
A Clean registry is a happy registry and Windows is appreciating it. Make sure that you do not have any keys which you do not need in the registry and that long-forgotten application trails are deleted for good.
Upgrade SSD firmware
Like updating drivers, updating firmware is also important, and having the latest firmware for your SSD can help a lot, newer firmware can eliminate freezing if the issue was in Windows not using SSD properly.
Update BIOS
Like updating SSD firmware can help so it can update Firmware on your BIOS. Make sure that you have the latest firmware version and freezing can go away if that was the issue.
One of the most useful built-in tools in Windows 10 is the Check Disk or CHKDSK utility. It is the one that maintains the integrity of the disk that’s connected to a computer which can be launched using the GUI or graphical user interface and using the command line.
There are a lot of things that warrant the running of this built-in utility and one of these things is the readability of the disk. Recently, a number of users reported that they encountered an error when they tried to run the CHKDSK utility – the error states, “Cannot open volume for direct access”. This kind of error in CHKDSK appears each time the command line is launched according to the affected users.
As per the users who encountered this issue, they receive the following error messages when they tried running a ChkDsk command:
“C:WINDOWSsystem32>chkdsk /f g:
Cannot open volume for direct access.C:WINDOWSsystem32>chkdsk /f f:
The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is 0529357401.”
To fix the “Cannot open volume for direct user access” error, here are some suggestions that might help. Follow them carefully.
Option 1 – Try running the CHKDSK utility on Boot
On the other hand, you can also try to run the CHKDSK utility on Boot so you can fix the error and recover any damaged segments of the drive.
Open an elevated Command Prompt and enter this command: chkdsk /x /f /r
After that, you will a message that says, “Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)”
Type Y and tap Enter to schedule a CHKDSK scan once your computer reboots next time.
Option 2 – Try to run the Primary Hard Disk Self Test
The next thing you can do to fix the problem is to run the Primary Hard Disk Self Test by following the steps below.
You need to boot your computer into the BIOS first.
After that, go to the Diagnostics tab and select the “Primary Hard Disk Self Test” option. Note that it may be different depending on the motherboard with different manufacturers but they should imply the same thing.
Now, wait until the test is completed, and then boot your computer normally.
Option 3 – Try to check the hard drive’s health
The next thing you can do to resolve the issue is to check the health of your hard drive using the WMIC utility in the Windows Command Prompt. This utility will check if your hard drive has any problems which resulted in the “Cannot open volume for direct user access” error.
Option 4 – Try to disable various restrictions on your hard drive
You might also want to disable the various restrictions on your hard drive since it is possible that it is encrypted or restricted which explains why you are unable to perform any operations in it and throws the “Cannot open volume for direct user access” error instead. For instance, if you have BitLocker, you can try to disable it and see if it fixes the error or not.
Option 5 – Try to uninstall or disable the Drive Locking feature on your hard drive
You could also look for any Drive Locking feature on your hard drive that tricks disk changes as it might be the root cause of the problem. Thus, if you find one, you need to either uninstall or disable it and then execute a check disk command to resolve the problem.
Option 6 – Try to disable the application service
Disabling the application service can also help you fix the problem. How? Refer to these steps:
Tap the Win + R keys to launch the Run utility and type “services.msc” in the field and then hit Enter to open the Services Manager.
Next, scroll down among the list of services and look for the service related to the security software or disk checker software.
Once you find it, right-click on that service and select Properties.
After that, change its Startup type to Disabled and click on the OK and Apply buttons to save the changes made.
Now restart your computer and don’t forget to enable the service back once the disk check is completed.
Option 7 – Try to use Repair Volume via Windows PowerShell
You could also try to use the Repair Volume using Windows PowerShell. All you have to do is open PowerShell as admin and type the “repair-volume -drive letter <DRIVE LETTER>” command and then tap Enter to run Repair Volume. This should resolve the error.
