Can't See pagefil.sys and hiberfil.sys Files!?

brispuss · 11 Jan 2024

dalchina said:

Export the registry keys as a backup. Change them to align with mine and recheck.

- It may be it has caused this.. or something else.

It would seem that something you've done or has happened is not a common experience.

As for a group policy, there doesn't seem to be one included by default, but there are guides on adding one to control this.

Thanks for the comments.

Edited my registry values accordingly; but still can't manually unhide the system files.

I've had to reinstall Windows 10 maybe twice over the last year or so. I have a dual boot setup (Windows 10 and Windows 7). Previously, sometimes I was unable to select the boot up operating system, or the selected boot operating system failed to fully boot up.

Not quite sure why I had these boot issues, but possibly related to Windows updates, or possibly related to running Advanced System Care (infrequently), or due to something else? I often run a program uninstaller when uninstalling software to ensure everything related to the software installation is removed. Perhaps this uninstaller is removing some files and/or some registry values/settings that shouldn't really be removed?

Note that I've used Advanced System Care for maybe two years now with no apparent issues. I'm certain I could manually unhide system files previously. But as of now, for whatever reason(s), I can no longer display hidden system files manually.

I've run chkdsk and SFC quite a number of times with the result that chkdsk didn't find any disk issues, but sometimes SFC did and still does on occasion find some system file "violations" which are or have supposedly been corrected.

Wipe Windows 10 partition thoroughly, and once again reinstall Windows 10?

dalchina · 11 Jan 2024

Just for this? No.. but then, what else may be wrong.

You could try the freeware solution I provided (screenshot near the beginning).

If that works, easy.

Of course, having System Restore points and disk images helps enormously... provided you discover the problem soon after it occurs, and ideally have an idea of when it occurs.

The less you do by way of extra cleaning, tweaking, etc other than say wer log dmp tmp files in appropriate locations where these are not covered by built-in disk cleanup, the safer you are.

And I would never recommend cleaning the registry.