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Archive for December, 2023

USB Drive DISKPART “CLEAN” getting “Access is denied.” error

by on Dec.30, 2023, under Techie, Windows

If a USB Drive is not able to be formatted or partitioned through the normal methods within Windows, then you may need to use DISKPART to CLEAN the drive. Recently I came across two (2) USB Drives given an “Access is denied.” error when trying to run CLEAN on them.
Below is the solution (ref: Microsoft Tech Community – USB drive cannot be cleaned or partitioned):

  • Right-click the Start menu and launch “Command Prompt (Admin)
  • At the command prompt type in “diskpart
  • Type in “list disk
  • Type in “select disk #” (ie “select disk 3” if Disk 3 was the USB drive you are working with)
  • If typing in “clean” returns an “Access is denied.” error message then first type in “covert gpt
  • Type in “clean” (this time it should work as expected)
  • You can now close the Command Prompt and partition/format the USB Drive like normal.

NOTE: This was all done on a Windows 10 (latest build as of Dec 2023) machine.

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(Manjaro) KDE Plasma – screens not going to sleep

by on Dec.30, 2023, under Linux, Techie

Suddenly after an about back in November I noticed the monitors no longer going to sleep. After digging around I found that the System Settings > Power Management > Energy Savings was throwing errors (I think the exact error was “kde power management service not running /usr/lib/org_kde_powerdevil”) about the service not running and therefor the panels would not be interacted with and all of the setting were disabled. Searching over a couple weeks finally came up with a solution thanks to a post on the Arch Linux BBS (ref: [SOLVED] KDE plasma power management not working / starting):

  • Edit /usr/lib/systemd/user/plasma-powerdevil.service — I used Kate since it will correct sudo when saving
  • Find the “TimeoutSec=” variable (line 10) — I changed mine to “10sec
  • Logoff or Reboot
  • System Settings > Power Management > Energy Savings should now be working as expected

NOTE: I ended up applying this fix a few times due to an update seeming breaking things again. It has been “holding” fine with all the updates through December though. More details can be found on the Manjaro forums here.

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