John,
The other profile command prompt / powershell didn’t work either.
I ran HDTune and looked at the Health tab. It appears it reads the disk statistics, correct? The only line that showed attention (blue/green) was CRC errors. All else was green-ok. The CRC number was consistent and stable. I ran the Dell Support assist Hardware analysis which includes Hard Disk analysis. It passed with no errors. After it ran, I again ran HDTune and the CRC values were the same as before.
This still ‘feels’ like a permission mismatch. I run a number of pieces of software (e.g., amateur radio) that must be installed outside the ‘Program Files…’ directories to get around permission issues. Since things worked fine, Windows update, things don’t work fine but do in SAFE MODE (and for installers), I’m suspecting the update and looking for instances of commonality.
I will try a less aggressive chkdsk first to see what’s detected and keep going forward. I’ll also run a boot time hardware diagnostic to see what it finds when I have the opportunity.
Thanks for helping,
don