Windows Tips

Infopackets Reader Phoebe A. writes: " Dear Dennis, Today I tried to free up some space on my C drive by moving files over to my external hard drive, but Windows gave me an error message, stating that 'Error during copy: the request could not be ... performed because of an I/O device error'. I've also tried using 'TeraCopy' to copy files over, but it keeps freezing on the same files. Can you help? " My response: If you receive an error that says "the request could not be performed because of an I/O device error" when trying to copy or move a file, that usually (but not always) indicates bad ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Scott writes: " Dear Dennis, I'm thinking of turning on disk encryption for my Windows 10 computer. I've never done this before. Is there anything to be concerned about or to be aware of? " My response: This is a good question. ... The truth of the matter is that if you encrypt your entire C drive using Windows BitLocker or a third party utility, it's going to slow your system down quite a bit. The reason for this is because every single file written to the drive must be encrypted, and then decrypted when read - including your operating system files. Constantly encrypting and ... (view more)

Continuing on with last week's article, David L. writes: " Thanks for your help in identifying the culprit that was causing random Blue Screens of Death ( BAD_POOL_CALLER ) on both mine and my wife's system. Question: I have been using ZoneAlarm for ... many years and it has been good to me. If I decide to stick with the Windows Firewall per your recommendation - what happens if hackers find an exploit in the Windows Firewall that allows them into my system? Yes, ZoneAlarm has caused my Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) and it costs money upfront (versus the Windows Firewall which is free) - but why ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader David L. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a VERY perplexing problem! My wife and I are trying to publish a book online a website (CreateSpace.com) - unfortunately, both her system and my system are crashing with blue screens of death ... (BSOD) error: BAD_POOL_CALLER. I am using Mozilla Firefox on my machine, and she is using Edge. I've called Microsoft and talked to their support for over 4 hours but they were unable to help - and in fact, my system is operating even worse than before! You've done work for me in the past and I need to have you connect to my system and tell me ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Barry P. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have an HP computer running Windows 10 (previously upgraded from Windows 8), and it's running very slow. I'd like to reinstall Windows - but before I do that, I want to back everything up onto ... external hard drive. I want to keep the backup as small as possible - as such, I noticed that I have a 'C:\System Recovery' folder with 'C:\System Recovery\Repair' and 'C:\System Recovery\Repair\Backup' subfolders. The 'C:\System Recovery' folder is taking up 40GB of data and I'd like to know if it's safe to delete. I have another machine here and I ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Alan B. writes: " Dear Dennis, I rebooted my laptop recently, and now my keyboard has completely stopped working. I looked at the status of my keyboard under Device Manager and it reports that my keyboard is a 'Standard PS/2 ... Keyboard' with an error code 39. The specific error message is: 'Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)'. I have scoured the Internet and have tried various registry 'fixes' online, but nothing works! You fixed my computer a few years back using your remote desktop support service, and ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Tom T. writes: " Dear Dennis, I recently had to reinstall Windows and I'm trying to clean up the root directory of my C drive to keep things tidy. I have a Windows.old.000 folder that I would like to remove, but every time I try ... to delete it, I get a window that says 'You need permission to perform this action' and nothing gets deleted. I've tried ccleaner (crap cleaner) and check marked the 'Delete old windows installation' option (under the Advanced menu), but that doesn't work, either. What do I have to do to remove the Windows.old.000 folder and its contents? " My ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Gros C. writes: " Dear Dennis, By mistake I installed both Windows 10 64 bit and Windows 32 bit on my machine. Both installations reside on separate partitions. I want to keep the Windows 10 64 bit, but the problem is that I don't ... know how to safely remove the Windows 10 32 bit from my machine. Can you give me a bit of advice on how to remote Windows 10 32 bit? " My response: This can be very, very tricky, as how to remove Windows 10 32 bit (or even the 64 bit version) on a separate partition depends on which installation of Windows contains the master boot record. For ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Gord F. writes: " Dear Dennis, I have a very vexing issue. For the last few weeks, Firefox randomly produces a ' This connection is untrusted ' message whenever I try to sign out of my Outlook email account (outlook.live.com), or ... when I visit other secure websites. It seems to work one minute, then it won't work the next. If I shut down and restart the computer the 'This connection is untrusted' error disappears, only to pop up again the next time I visit a secure website at some point in the day. When I see a 'This connection is untrusted' message, I've clicked the ' ... (view more)

Infopackets Reader Marion L. writes: " Dear Dennis, I haven't used my laptop for a few weeks. I went to turn it on today, but it won't turn on at all. I have it plugged in to the wall power outlet, but it still doesn't work. What do I do now? " My ... response: This is a fairly common issue with laptops; oftentimes the laptop won't turn on even if it's plugged into the wall if it's been sitting for a while - in your case, a few weeks. Sometimes, however, something else has gone wrong, and parts of the laptop may be corrupt or not working, or the laptop may have died. I'll explain what you need to ... (view more)