Archive for June, 2016

How to Fix Slow Boot-up Issue – Troubleshoot Guide

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Many users who perform the free upgrade from Windows 7 or 8.1 to Windows 10 may suffer from massive lengthened boot times. The symptoms include a black screen after seeing Windows loading animation, and the ability to move your cursor around but an inability to do anything else. The process may last in excess of a minute.

In most cases, the sluggish boot-up time is not due to the voluminous size of the new OS but to some malware and non-optimized startup settings. What can you do to fix this issue? First, run an complete system malware scan to remove any possible malware infections. Windows 10 is still vulnerable to malicious virus and programs, and the old malware and virus could be the reason behind Windows 10 slow boot-up. After a thorough antivirus scan, you can modify your system settings to solve the problem. Here are some solutions to speed up boot times on your Windows 10.

Method 1:

  • Right click the taskbar and choose Task Manager from the list.
  • Click the Startup tab, click the Startup impact to list the items from High to None.
  • Select the items with High/Medium/Low rating and click Disable bottom.

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You can disable any startup items you think unnecessary to load when Windows boots up, including your antivirus software. AMD and Nvidia driver services can also be disabled without affecting the graphics performance of your system.

Method 2:

  • Click Search icon, type “power options” and then hit Enter key.
  • In the Power Options window, click Choose what the power button does on the left.
  • In the System Settings window, click Change setting that are currently unavailable.
  • Click Turn on fast startup under Shutdown settings, and then click Save changes.

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Method 3:

  • Right click Start, click Run, type in “services.msc” and hit Enter key.
  • When the Service window opens, click Starup Type to sort the list of services.
  • Observe the services which appear to take time to launch, double click the service with the Automatic startup type, and the Properties window shows up.
  • Change the Startup type from Automatic to Automatic (Delayed start) or Manual.
  • Click OK to save the change, close the window, and reboot your computer.

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Method 4:

In some cases the black screen before boot is a graphic driver problem for the laptops that switch between Intel HD Graphics and a dedicated card from Nvidia or AMD. You can test to fix the problem by disable your AMD or Nvidia graphics driver.

  • Right click Start menu and choose Device Manager from the list.
  • Click Display adapter on the left, select your dedicated graphics card labelled Nvidia, AMD Radeon or ATi Radeon, right click on it and choose Disable from the list.
  • Turn off your PC and start it again to see if the problem is solved.

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Method 5:

If you are having an AMD graphics card, you can disable a power saving feature so your system will no longer disable the second GPU when idle, and your Windows 10 may boot in under 30 seconds, compared to over 3 minutes for ULPS Enabled.

  • Type “regedit” into Cortana and hit Enter to bring up Registry Editor.
  • Press Ctrl + F to open the Find box, type EnableULPS and click Find Next.
  • Double click EnableULPS and change the value from 1 to 0.

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In this tutorial we’ve shown you several simple way to speed up Windows 10 slow boot time. Does any of them help troubleshoot your boot-up issue? If none of the aforementioned methods work for your case, you might need to restore Windows 10 to its default setting, or do a clean install of Windows 10 to see if that works.

Wanna get more How-to guides on system maintanence and security? Stay with us for fresh content on this website.

How to Troubleshoot Access Denied Errors

 

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Have you ever get an access denied message when open a file? Some of you may run into the problem of being unable to access files or folders, and the message shows up like “Access Denied”. Access Denied error may be triggered under these circumstances: the file may be in use, corrupted or encrypted; you don’t have the proper permissions; the user account may be corrupted; the folder ownership may have changed…… How to fix Access Denied error? Check out this troubleshooting guide.

If you receive the “access denied message” when you try to open a file, you may first check if the file is encrypted or not. Here’s how to do: right click on the file, choose Properties from the list, and then click Advanced button in the General tab. If the Encrypt contents to secure data check box is selected, then this file is encrypted, and you will need the certificate that was used to encrypt this file so as to decrypt it first. To import or export a certificate in Windows 10, type “certmgr.msc” in the Search box, and hit Enter to open Certificate Manager. Then select the certificate, click All Tasks from the Action menu, and then click the corresponding command to carry out action.

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If the file is not encrypted, corrupted, or in use, but you still cannot access, edit or delete it, then check the permissions of the files or the folder the file is saved in. Here is how to do: right click the files or folder, click Properties, click Security tab and then click your account under Group or user names to see the permission you have. The permissions for the selected user or group are shown in the lower portion of the properties dialog box. In many cases, Access Denied error is mainly caused due to permission issues. Here are the troubleshooting methods you can try to fix it.

To regain access you can modify the permissions for the file in the following way:

  • Right click the file or folder you want to get full control, and then click Properties.
  • Click Security tab and then click Edit button under the Group or user names.
  • Click your user account, tick the Allow checkbox next to Full control, and click OK.

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If you want to ensure all the files have the correct permission, you can re-confirm the permissions for your user’s personal folder by doing the following steps:

  • Right click the file or folder you want to take ownership, and then click Properties.
  • Click Security tab, and click Advanced under Permission for Authenticated Users.
  • In the Advanced Security Settings window, click Change next to the “Owner:” label.
  • In the Select User or Group window, input your user account in the area which says “Enter the object name to select” and click OK to close this window.
  • Check the “Replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object” option in the bottom left corner, and then press OK.

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Now the ownership of all subfolders and files inside your user folder has been changed, and subsequently you should be able to access those files and folders. That’s it. If you are prevented from doing any operation on files or folders, just perform the aforementioned methods to take ownership and get full access to them in Windows 10.

Is this tutorial helps solve your Access Denied issues? Feel free to share your thoughts with us here 🙂

How to Configure Windows Defender on Your Computer

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Windows Defender is a Windows built-in app that helps detect and remove malware, spyware or other potentially unwanted software. If you install other 3rd party antivirus or security software, Windows Defender will disable itself automatically, while when the 3rd party software stops functioning, it will activate itself as well. So if you want to make Windows Defender work, you will need to disable your 3rd party security software first. In this guide we will show you how to configure Windows Defender.

There are several ways to open Windows Defender in Windows 10:

  1. Right click Start menu and choose Control Panel from the list. Type Windows Defender in the upper right corner and click Windows Defender from the result list.
  2. Press Windows + I keys to open the Setting panel. Click Update & Security, click Windows Defender in the left panel, and scroll down to click Use Windows Defender.
  3. Click the Search icon in the taskbar, type Windows Defender and click Windows Defender settings from the list. Then scroll down to select Use Windows Defender.

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In the Windows Defender UI, you can click Settings button in the upper right corner and then configure Windows Defender, i.e. turning on/off real-time protection, cloud-based protection, or sample submission, as well as adding an exclusion. If you don’t want Windows Defender to scan a specific file, folder or process, click the + icon under Add an exclusion, specify the item, and click Exclude this… button.

If you cannot turn on Windows Defender, check if other security software is running. If not, try to run a complete Windows Update including Windows Defender update.

To disable Windows Defender, Windows 10 users can perform one of these ways:

  1. Turn off Real-time Protection and Cloud-based Protection in the Settings panel.
  2. Type services.msc in the Search bar and hit Enter key to open Services Manager. Scroll down to locate Windows Defender Service, and change the startup type from Automatic to Disabled. Also disable Windows Defender Network Inspection Service.
  3. Click the Search icon, type regedit and hit Enter to open Registry Editor. Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows Defender and set the value of DWORD called DisableAntiSpyware to 1.
  4. Type gpedit.msc in the Search bar and hit Enter to open Group Policy Editor. Navigate to Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Defender, right click on Turn off Windows Defender, choose Edit and then Enable option. Then reboot your computer.

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Also, you can schedule a periodic scan in Windows Defender by doing these:

  • Type taskschd.msc in the Search bar and hit Enter to open Task Scheduler.
  • Navigate to Task Scheduler -> Microsoft -> Windows -> Windows Defender in the left pane, and double click the Windows Defender Scheduled Scan in the middle pane.
  • Click the Triggers tab in the open window, and then click New… Button
  • Choose begin the task as On a schedule, and then set your time and frequency.
  • After that, click Enabled in the left bottom corner and click OK to save the change.

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So that’s it. Now you have learned how to configure Windows Defender. If you have any other issues about Windows Defender, leave your question and we’re glad to help.