How To Fix Location Not Available Error In win 7, 8 & 10

Ever got location not available error on your windows computer, well, it’s not you only. While using a computer, I encountered so many errors and disconnections that I sometimes never know how they come to happen. These errors are quite many and they happen to almost every computer user and sometimes other devices other than computers. Every time I get such an error I get frustrated and wish I could get a quick fix their and then to solve the problem.

This is why today, I am focusing on one of the common error problems, the location not available error in win 7, 8 and 10.

Situations Where Location Not Available Error Happens And How To Fix Them

Watch Summary Video On How to Fix Location Not Available Error in Windows

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#1. Access Is Denied “Location Not available”

Sometimes when you try to open a drive, you are welcomed with an error message of location not available, access denied. Perhaps the commonest error, and it is usually common with a moment when you try to open the drive.

In Windows 8 and 10, the error “Location is not available” seems to be affecting those users who upgraded from older Windows versions to Windows 8 and 10.

Fixing Access Denied Location Not Available Error

This can be fixed in 4 ways A to D and you can try out another fix incase the first ones fail to work out for you.

Fix A: Re-confirm the permissions of the file.

This fix involves going to the properties of the file and re-confirming the permissions of the files making them accessible again as a result. Which means that you will have to take the ownership of the file or folder with which you’re getting Access is denied message.

Right click the same folder now, select Properties.
In the Properties window, switch to Security tab and click Advanced.

Then in the following window, since you’re now the owner of content, check replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object option at bottom.
Click Apply followed by OK.

From this, check if the issue is resolved. If the error is not resolved then you can move to fix B.

Fix B: Modifying permissions for users account.

Right click the problematic folder or file with which you are facing the error, then click on properties.
Next, switch to Security tab, under Group or user names, highlight your user account name. Click Edit

You need to make sure that all options like Full control, read, write, modify etc. are having a check mark under Allow. Once you are sure about this, click Apply followed by OK.
Recheck the status of issue, if you have ticked an option that wasn’t checked earlier.

This should fix your issue, nevertheless, if the error is not resolved, then you can try out fix C.

Fix C: Remove encryption

You come to this when, fix A and fix B have failed. If you have worked on the previous procedures, fix A and fix B and there is no progress, then you can move to this part. However, this fix only applies if the data you are trying to access is encrypted. Being encrypted may deny access to the data so what this fix does is removing the encryption. Literally, this means that, in case your folder or file content is encrypted, then also you may face access is denied error. It can be solved with the following quick fix.

Firstly, right-click the file or folder and select Properties.

In General tab, click Advanced. Now, you’ll see following window, where you need to uncheck Encrypt contents to secure data option simply.
Here, when the data is decrypted, you will be able to see what is in the file or the folder.

However, if it’s already unchecked then the data is not encrypted. You have to move on to fix D.

Fix D: Restoring to Default

Go to C:\Users (or the drive where the Windows is installed).
Open the folder name with your user name.

Right Click on the Desktop and select Properties.
Under the Location tab click the Restore Default button.
Restart PC.

With the given fixes A to D, you will be able to come to a quick fix of the “access denied” location not available error. One of these fixes will work for you.

#2. The Specified Network Name Is No Longer Available “Location Not Available”

How-To-Fix-Location-Not-Available-Error-In-win-7,-8-&-10

The specified network name is no longer available error usually occurs because the Server Message Block (SMB) session is deleted on the server-side. With this kind of error, after you have put your computer to sleep, you cannot access the mapped network drive for a short time, and you cannot save open Microsoft Office files (Word, Excel) within the first 30 seconds after you resume from hibernation. Here, error messages that appear are, location is not available, can’t Access x:\, the specified network name is no longer available.

There are many possible reasons the SMB connection might fail:

First of all, network issues are a common reason, constituting a potentially unlimited variety of hardware failure or network hardware configuration problems; such issues may or may not involve packet loss.

Also, simple firewalls may block a connection consistently, while advanced firewalls might destroy an existing connection seemingly at random or under very specific conditions.
Here, either client or server might close the connection due to one of a number of timeout or retry limits either at the SMB protocol layer or the underlying TCP layer; such limits are often encountered due to network congestion or excessive load on the storage.
Another is that NAS may stop responding entirely due to hardware or software issues; it may in some cases be misconfigured. Appliances using post-process reduplication may stop responding if the process starts prematurely. Device name is already in use and this connection has not been restored.

FIX A

In solving this issue, if the repository share is located on a Windows server, try creating a Windows repository on that server instead of a CIFS (SMB) repository.
Reboot both the SMB client machine (repository gateway) and the SMB server (NAS).

If other storage is available, try writing the backup to the other storage as both verification of the problem and as a temporary workaround.
Consider reconfiguring the NAS as iSCSI or an NFS mount on a separate Linux repository server, depending on what is supported by the NAS.

However, this change may involve data loss, iSCSI usually offers the best performance. Therefore, writing backup files to SMB shares over a slow or unreliable network, such as a WAN connection, is not recommended. Deploy a gateway server with a fast connection to the share. To rule out interference from a firewall, temporarily disable any software firewalls (including certain antivirus products) on the SMB client or server, as well as any hardware firewalls between them.

FIX B

Here you have to use a hotfix. A supported hotfix is available from Microsoft.

However, this fix works only if you got the error under the following scenarios.

You have a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 computer that supports the sleep and resume functionality and joined to a domain.
You access a mapped network drive from Explorer on a Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 computer.
You put the computer to sleep and wake the computer again after some time.

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#3. CRC error (Cyclic Redundancy Check) “Location Not Available”

Drive is not accessible, data error (cyclic redundancy check) — Credit: PDR

In some cases, while using my computer, this error occurs, Data error (cyclic redundancy check)’ error especially while I am trying to copy data from external HDD to the computer.

This error can be caused by various factors, including registry corruption, a cluttered hard disk, an unsuccessful program installation, misconfigured files, and more. Nevertheless, whatever the reason, the cyclic redundancy check error can be fixed.

Firstly, in fixing the cyclic redundancy check error, you have to first recover and save your data.

Here is a way to recover the data.

Launch the data recovery software, and then select a suitable recovery module in the main interface. Here, to recover data from inaccessible drive with CRC error, you can choose “Damaged Partition Recovery” feature. As long as the partition exists, you can recover lost data with this feature.
Full scan the target drive which keeps saying: Drive is not accessible, data error (cyclic redundancy check).
Save all needed files on a safe place.

Here, your data is safe.

FIX A

Right click the drive you want to check, and then click Properties, then Tools. Next, click “Check Now” which is under “Error Checking”.

Click “Automatically fix the file system errors” to do a basic check and automatically repair problems with file and folders, and then click “Start”.

However, running CHKDSK via right click sometimes makes it unable to run the scan and repair properly, and at this time you can try the alternate method of running CHKDSK

How to run CHKDSK

Open the command prompt. You must run CHKDSK commands as an administrator to have the necessary privileges to execute the scan.
Type “chkdsk /f x:” into the command prompt. The letter “x” should be replaced with the letter name of the drive you’d like to run the scan on. Press Enter.
Wait for the scan to complete. Once finished CHKDSK will give you a report and restart your computer.

This will fix “Drive is not accessible, data error (cyclic redundancy check)” problem.

FIX B

The Cyclic redundancy check on a DVD disc can be fixed, but first, you should ensure that the DVD disc is not damaged or scratched, and then clean it with a cleaning kit. After that, scan and defrag the DVD disc if necessary and make sure that the DVD has enough space left on it to install the game.

#4. The Parameter Is Incorrect “Location Not Available”

The parameter is incorrect error is usually caused by unplugging removable drive directly, USB port problem, bad sectors on the hard drive, file system goes wrong

FIX A: Formatting the inaccessible hard drive

You can try formatting your disk to fix “the parameter is incorrect” error.

Right-click My Computer, and then choose Manage > Disk Management.

Right-click the target drive and select “Format”. Click “OK” on the pop-up message box.

With these two steps, you will have formatted the inaccessible hard drive.

FIX B: Run “chkdsk /f /r”

If “the parameter is incorrect” error is caused by bad sectors, lost clusters, cross-linked files, file system errors and directory errors, you will have to do these two things.

Here, open Start and type cmd, and next select Run as administrator.
Type command line chkdsk (drive name): /f /r and then press Enter.

Although formatting disk or running the “chkdsk /f /r” command line can help to fix “the parameter is incorrect” error, the 2 fixes A and B will delete all original data on this drive. Therefore, before fixing “the location is not available” error, you had better transfer its data out. Here, I recommend MiniTool Power Data Recovery to help you recover your data.

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#5. The File Or Directory Is Corrupted And Unreadable “Location Not available”

What appears here is a message with, an error location not available and it usually happens in cases where the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable. When using a USB drive under Windows operating system, you may encounter the error message “file or directory is corrupted and unreadable”. As a result, you cannot access data stored on the USB hard drive partition.

The main cause of this error is damaged in either the file, folder, MFT, FAT or the USB drive and these include; MFT or FAT corruption, virus infection, Physical issues, USB drives are not safely removed from PC.

FIX A: Carry out Chkdsk to check and repair errors

Chkdsk.exe is a command-line tool offered by Windows to check and repair volume errors. This tool tries to repair any problem it finds out, for example, lost clusters, cross-linked files, directory errors, etc. This can be done in windows 7, 8 and 10.

However, you need to download the MiniTool Partition Wizard and the free data recovery software, the MiniTool Power Data Recovery because they will help a lot in these fixes.

FIX B: Run Command Prompt as administrator:

Click “Start” button and search for “Command Prompt”, then right-click it and select “Run as administrator”.
In the following message box, click “Yes” to allow it to change your computer.
In the command prompt box, continue to type chkdsk /f h: and press Enter. H is the drive letter of the unreadable partition and it can be other drive letters according to your real situation. This takes some time to finish the process, and is largely related to the amount of files and folders on that partition, the read speed of the drive, the capacity of the volume, etc.

If you see the message “Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another process. You should type “Y” and hit Enter key, and then restart your computer to resume the disk check.

Note that, although Chkdsk is always the way that comes to mind at first time, it won’t work in some cases, and sometimes it may over-repair items, leading to difficulty for file recovery. Thus you will use this tool only if you do not want to recover data.

FIX C: Check bad sectors with MiniTool Partition Wizard

This tool can be used to check bad sectors, manage partitions, recover partitions, and more.

Install and launch MiniTool Partition Wizard and you’ll see its main interface in which information about all your disks and partitions connected to computer is clearly shown.
Right-click the unreadable partition and select “Surface Test”. Click “Start Now” and the program starts to scan the partition.

When the scanning is finished, it reports how many bad sectors there is on the unreadable partition (in my case it’s 0).If there are bad sectors, please think twice whether the data in this drive means a lot to you. If YES, before you send it to repair center or throw it away directly, you should perform data recovery at once instead. And now you need the help of MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

With fix A, B and C, you will be able to solve the error and also recover data.

#6. Desktop Blank And Apps Deleted “Location Not Available”

This error could be on a hard drive on the computer, or on a network and it appears in a message as “C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\Desktop refers to a location that is unavailable.

However, you have to check if the disk is properly inserted, so that you are connected to the Internet or your network, and then try again. If it still cannot be located, the information might have been moved to a different location”

FIX: A

Reboot your PC, press F8 to get Advanced Boot Options, select Last Know Good Configuration and boot Windows normally.
Open Cmd, type and execute two commands in the command prompt to create a new user profile: Now copy your data from the previous file or folder.

However, this method works for local accounts only, though this should be able to help you.

You can also,

Open “C:\users\[your user account]” folder. If you see two Desktop folders with one blank and the other with your Desktop items you need to delete the blank one.

Copy the desktop folder with your desktop items from “C:\Users\[your user account]\” folder to “C:\Windows\system32\config\systemprofile\”.
Restart the computer.

FIX B: Create a new user account and check.

Here with the new account, you will need to fix the corrupted profile. To fix the corrupted profile, you need to carry out the following procedure.

Press Windows and X together and select Windows Explorer.
Click on View tab and Click on Options at the top right corner.

Click the View tab, and then click Show hidden files, folders, and drives.
Uncheck the box which states Hide protected operating system files.
Click Yes to confirm, and then click Ok.

Locate the C:\Users\Old_Username folder, where C is the drive that Windows is installed on, and Old Username is the name of the profile you want to copy files from.
Select all of the files and folders in this folder, except these files, ntuser.dat, ntuser.dat.log and ntuser.ini.
Right click and Select Copy.

Locate the C:\Users\New_Username folder, where C is the drive that Windows is installed on, and New Username is the name of the new user profile you created.
Right click inside the folder and select Paste.
Restart your computer and check.

These two fixes, A and B will be able to fix the location not available, desktop blank and apps deleted.

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Conclusion

You will realise that with the mentioned fixes in all the location not available situations, most of them mention restoring of data. The best way to avoid data loss is backup. It is recommended to back up your files regularly with backup software or cloud storage. If you have lost files due to Location is not available error, you can fix it and recover lost data. I hope you find a quick fix from my discussion for any location not available error on your computer.

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