Hi Denis, I would like to have up to 500Gb. I see there's a lot of services out there that want upwards of $50 USD per year for that. I have seen some posts around the web about occasional "lifetime"...

I'm old school, and make local backups of everything. Of course, that loses the convenience of having content in the "cloud" (essentially just a fancy name for network storage), where you can access...

OK, got a video uploaded to demonstrate the problem:

https://youtu.be/VVaHKeLo9YY

Interestingly enough, I found a video made by an HP Pavilion owner. It's an older model, but he had a somewhat...

Thanks for the suggestion. I did see that brief blackout pressing that key combination, but it doesn't rectify the problem. I've taken a video of it--just have to get a chance to upload it,...

Definitely not graphics card. The physical pressing of the bezel restores function. Resolution & all graphics settings haven't changed for over a year...

I have an aging HP Pavilion 15-ab laptop that has served me very well over the past 7 years. Finally the cooling fan failed and thankfully the HP built-in firmware was able to alert of the problem...

Good stuff, thanks Denis. It's really maddening how at this late stage of Windows, there isn't a simple GUI command option in which to correct unwanted mappings of these folders. It doesn't take much...

Sorry for any confusion here. I sometimes use the wrong nomenclature. It's knowing the difference between folders and system folders.

In Windows Explorer, there's the User Account group... which...

Excellent tutorial.
I was in a strange situation where right-mouse clicking on Quick Access entries did not offer a menu item for unpinning. I tried numerous ways to view Quick Access in order to...

I did check out the tutorials. The one for LIBRARIES doesn't apply. I can affect changes to those library folders with no problems. The other one, dealing with personal files... it fails, as I...

Thanks! I do have a few restore points. I'm not sure when this copy of the system folder took place... it might be on the previous restore points as well.

Btw, I thought perhaps I could remap the...

OK, this is weird. I can't explain how it happened.
Per usual, at the root of my Windows Account in Windows Explorer, I see the MUSIC top folder as normal. However, underneath my PICTURES top...

One of them is real...https://i.imgur.com/vMqtCXO.jpg
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Inspired by A Guy,

Poor Waldo...
https://i.imgur.com/HbO6zNT.jpeg

https://i.imgur.com/kY5tNgW.jpg

Excellent. Thanks for this advice, jumanji. I will try GetDatabackPro and see if that has promise. Of course at this point, cloning will require a target drive. I'm informing the owner to consider...

MaloK was kind enough to point me to a diagnosis image for booting up into a special environment for performing the attempt at bad block repair. If anything, this is a great educational exercise....

Yes, I never got that option. And now it makes sense based on what you said below. So the damage is bad enough that software tools get confused on MBR vs. exFAT vs. GPT... And as you mention MBR is...

^ I appreciate you flagging jumanji, Steve. I've also expressed thanks for his help on this. I don't know what'll come of it, but it could be another teachable scenario!

I don't know if the state...

I can't even do that because the drive has no volume or drive letter...

I was able to get a hold of MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro version 10.2 (borrowed). It seems whatever enhancements they'd...

Thanks, jumanji. Well, this is not looking good. HD Sentinel is unable to even test it. So is it likely that this damage isn't logical but actually physical? Meaning, the drive can't even be...

^ Hi jumanji, thanks so much for taking the time to help out here.

This is a WD My Book model WDBBGB0080HBK-NA (other #'s: E4C HAABGA 4318Q). It may have been acquired about 2 years ago, or less....

You are speaking as someone who didn't even see how the drive fell, the hardness of the floor, the exact height of the drop... kind of bold to make that declaration with so little knowledge of the...

It's an external drive, so no SATA port connection possible. Only USB. I have browsed around and seen jumanji's responses to people seeking help and he certainly appears knowledgeable. When he has...

Ugh. Well, that sounds like a major PITA. I had let Test Disk keep running... I took a few screen captures and appended above. It did finish, but then didn't report on a partition to select. This...