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assign drive letter system cannot find the file specified

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8 Methods: The system Cannot Find the File Specified

Troubled by “The system cannot find the file specified” in Windows 11,10, 8, 7.? Effective solutions are available in this article to help you fix the “system cannot find the file specified” error on Windows.

Emily

By Emily / Updated on May 12, 2023

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“I get ‘The system cannot find the file specified (0x80070002)’ error preventing backup from starting Windows 10. Upgraded from Windows 7. Everything else works 100% fine. Trying to backup to internal drive. Help would be appreciated, thank you.”

The System Cannot Find The File Specified

Why “The system cannot find the file specified” occurs?

“The system cannot find the file specified” is a quite common error for Window users, especially for Windows 10. This error is sometimes followed by an error code: 0x80070002. But the failure type or code will be various on the different operating system specification. It might occur when you install disk driver, make a system image, access files or make other operations on the system. The main reasons include:

•Virus or malware attack.

•The connection is loose.

•Abnormal registry keys.

•There are some disk errors on the source volume.

•Crucial system files are missing or damaged.

•System partition is under an offline state.

•System partition is not active.

•Required files for the specific software are missing or corrupted.

8 Methods to fix "The system cannot find the file specified"

Next, we would like to share the following 8 effective solutions for “The system cannot find the file specified” error. For the best result, you can try them one by one until you get the error fixed. Before proceeding, you can first run reliable anti-virus software to remove any possible virus or malware and check whether the connection between hard drive and computer is tight. If everything is OK and the error still pops out, look further.

Method 1. Change registry key

Method 2. check and fix disk errors, method 3. restore or repair the missing files, method 4. install windows updates, method 5. uninstall and reinstall the drivers, method 6. make system partition online.

  • Method 7. Make sure system partition is active

Method 8. Format the USB flash drive

First of all, you can modify the registry key to fix this error. To do so, take the following steps:

1 . Press “Windows + R” at the same time, type “regedit” in the pop-out dialogue and press “Enter” to open Registry Editor.

2 . Navigate to the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion

3 . Expand the key and look for “RunOnce” key. If it does not exist, you can first create one: click the “CurrentVersion” key and choose “New > Key” from the drop-down menu, and name the new key as “RunOnce”.

Create New Key

Now, please navigate to “ HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion ” in the left panel and check if the RunOnce key has successfully been created. If not, repeat the above steps to recreate it. After that, you can close Registry Editor and restart Windows to check whether the error is fixed.

Run Once Registry

IMPORTANTCE : since making some changes to the current registry condition might cause risks, you can create an exact backup in advance. 1. In the registry editor window, click “File”> “Export” to export your registry. 2. Now enter the file name for your backup, and select “All” in “Export range” section. Click the “Save” button to export your registry.

Backup Registry

If “The system cannot find the file specified” error is caused by potential disk errors, you can run chkdsk command to check and repair errors.

1. Click Start button, input “cmd” in the search box and press Enter, right-click the Command Prompt icon and choose “Run as administrator”.

2. In the Command Prompt window, type command “ chkdsk g: /f /r /x ” and press Enter in order to check and fix possible errors. Replace “g” with the appropriate letter that matches your partition.

CHKDSK Check Error

Restoring the missing files is another effective method to fix the issue. This method is quite simple; you just need to run “ sfc/scannow ” command in the Command Prompt window.

Scannow Windows

After completion, if everything goes well, the message: “Windows Resource Protection did not find any integrity violations.” will appear.

If the Windows has not been updated for a long time, the error “The system cannot find the file specified” will occur to inform you that you should install all pending updates. So you need to install them:

1 . Press "Windows + I" keys and select “Update & Security”.

2 . Click Check for “Updates” and wait.

3 . When the list of available updates is revealed, install all of them.

Repeat the same procedure until all needed updates have been installed. After that, you still need to restart the system to finish the installation of updates.

If the error appears after you download the disk driver from the manufacturer’s official website, you can try to uninstall and reinstall the disk driver.

1. Type “Device Manager” in the search box and press enter, double click Device Manager to open it. Expand “Disk Drives” and locate the device you want to uninstall.

2. Right-click the device and select “Uninstall” from the drop-down list.

Uninstall Disk Driver

Then you will be asked if you are sure to uninstall the device, click “OK” button to confirm it. After uninstalling the driver, install the driver again.

If the issue still persists, there are chances that your system partition is offline, then you need to do the following:

1. Open Command Prompt again and run “diskpart” command inside it.

2. When diskpart starts, type “list volume” and press “Enter”: to list all partitions on your computer.

3. Type “select volume 1” and press “Enter”: to select the system volume. If your system volume is labeled by a different number, replace 1 with it.

4. Type “online volume” and press “Enter”.

Online System Volume

At last, close Command Prompt and restart your PC.

7. Make sure system partition is active

If “The system cannot find the file specified” error occurs while you are using Windows Backup, you can check if your system partition is set to active to fix this issue.

To do so, you just need to open Disk Management, right-click the system drive (usually C drive) and choose “Mark Partition as Active” option. If this option is greyed out, that means your system volume is already set to active.

System Drive Active

Finally, close Disk Management and restart your PC to check whether the error disappears.

If “The system cannot find the file specified” error happens when you insert your USB flash drive or any other removable storage devices, you can format them. To do so, you can right click the USB drive in Windows File Explorer, choose “Format” and follow the guide to finish the formatting operation.

If you fail and receive some format errors, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard . This freeware can format RAW, corrupted or even write-protected USB flash drive, SD card or other hard drives with ease in Windows 11/10/8/7. If you upgrade to  Professional version, you can optimize SSD drive performance, migrate OS to SSD, recover lost partitions and more.

1 . Download the freeware, install, and run it. Right-click the USB drive and choose “Format Partition”.

Format Partition

2 . Choose a proper file system based on your requirements and click “OK”.

FAT32 128GB USB

3 . Back to the main interface, click “Apply” to commit the pending operation.

Apply

“The system cannot find the file specified” error on Windows 11/10/8/7 can significantly affect the computer’s functioning. With the above effective solutions, I believe you can fix the error easily.

Emily

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[SOLVED]   I cannot assign drive letter to a partition so I can't use it.

  • Thread starter diapolical
  • Start date Feb 1, 2020

Distinguished

  • Feb 1, 2020

I have a 1 tb harddrive I use in my computer for storage, the OS is on a separate SSD. There were 2 partitions on the storage drive, the smaller one was 90gb. I noticed in partition software that there was a space of 3mb unallocated both before and after the 90gb partition. Just to tidy things up in the partition software window I extended the 90gb partition by 6mb, so that there would be no unallocated space before and after it. I did that operation in EaseUS Partition Master. The process went through but there was an error at the end, "update system information failed" .There was a partition created but there was no drive letter assigned. Windows Disk Mangement couldn't assign a drive letter either, the error was "The operation failed to complete because the disk mangement console view is not up to date etc" . I could delete the partition, so it appeared, in Disk Mangement, and then right clicking on the drive gave me the option of "new simple volume" produced the familiar error of "The operation failed to complete because the disk mangement console view is not up to date etc" though the partition seemed to have been created though no drive letter was assigned. The partitions on my other drives in Disk Management are shown graphically with text reporting their size, their file system and the word HEALTHY but the problematic partition was listed only with its size and no mention of HEALTHY nor of the file system. So I decided to clear the whole 1TB of data, and try to create a single partion on the hard drive to get the 90gb back. I deleted the larger partition successfully, creating unallocated space for the whole drive. But now I can't create a useable partion on the hard drive at all. I am runing into all the same problems I had when I tried to recreate the 90gb partition. EaseUS Partition Master Lists the partition as "GPT data partition", "Reserved Sectors-0", "First MFT Cluster-3", "usage 1%", "931.95GB". However the partition software command to "explore partition" does open up a window with the drive shown, just as it did when I was trying to get the 90GB partition working. Once again it seems there is a partition there but not one that windows can work with. Using diskpart in powershell with admin rights can't assign a drive letter. The "list volume" command doesn't even show the partition. "List disk" does show the disk as "disk 1" and I can select the disk, but from what I understand, diskpart assigns letters to partitions rather than disks. I have recently upgraded to win 10 from 8.1. The partition resizing was all attempted in Windows 10. The system is EFI, boots from a reserved system partition on the SSD. The partitions are GPT. There was no loss of power or power surges or shutdowns while I was resizing the partitions. So at the moment the drive is not usable. I don't expect it is physically damaged, it had a very good health report in SMART so far in its life and it never gave me any trouble. I think the problem may be that windows cannot mount the drive but I don't know how to overcome that. How can I get this drive back into action? Your expertise is apprectiated.  

  • Feb 2, 2020

To be honest, I didn't have to ask experts just to be told to replace the drive, it was what I would have had to do if i hadn't been able to solve the problem. I feel I was being pressurized here into accepting that the drive was faulty and into replacing it, which is in the end not a solution at all, but what you do when there is no solution. I wonder if ANY hard drive would pass all the benchmarks on those exhaustive HD Tune Pro tests?! But I did solve the problem, accidentally it just happens and it wasn't a hardware problem at all. It turns out that the windows driver was incorrect, Device Manger was listing the hard drive as an unknown device and when I updated the driver it was listed as a volume and instantly the 1TB hdd...

SkyNetRising

SkyNetRising

Can you show screenshot from Disk Management? (upload to imgur.com and post link)  

there is a screenshot of the disk management console here  

assign drive letter system cannot find the file specified

"...space of 3mb unallocated both before and after..." Tiny slivers of unallocated space are best ignored, partitions have to begin at certain places, others can do the geek-speak.  

RolandJS said: "...space of 3mb unallocated both before and after..." Tiny slivers of unallocated space are best ignored, partitions have to begin at certain places, others can do the geek-speak. Click to expand...
SkyNetRising said: Create single large partition and show screenshot from HDtune health. Click to expand...

This is a screenshot of the results of tests with HD Tune  

Replace cables connecting to this hdd (both - power and data cables). Watch SMART data values for Calibration retry and CRC errors. If those increase after changing cables, then consider replacing the drive.  

SkyNetRising said: Replace cables connecting to this hdd (both - power and data cables). Watch SMART data values for Calibration retry and CRC errors. If those increase after changing cables, then consider replacing the drive. Click to expand...

USAFRet

diapolical said: It's a laptop BTW Weren't the tests positive? I would rather not replace it. Is there no software that could correct the problem? Click to expand...
diapolical said: It's a laptop BTW I would rather not replace it. Click to expand...

To be honest, I didn't have to ask experts just to be told to replace the drive, it was what I would have had to do if i hadn't been able to solve the problem. I feel I was being pressurized here into accepting that the drive was faulty and into replacing it, which is in the end not a solution at all, but what you do when there is no solution. I wonder if ANY hard drive would pass all the benchmarks on those exhaustive HD Tune Pro tests?! But I did solve the problem, accidentally it just happens and it wasn't a hardware problem at all. It turns out that the windows driver was incorrect, Device Manger was listing the hard drive as an unknown device and when I updated the driver it was listed as a volume and instantly the 1TB hdd popped up in windows explorer with the 1TB partition intact and the drive letter assigned. I was looking at Device Manager for an unrelated issue when I noticed the Unknown Device listing. I won't be replacing the drive, there isn't a bad sector on it and there has never been any data corruption. It's just fine. I wonder if people here are being advised to replace their hardware far too readily, in the abscence of real problem solving. The thought makes me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps eventually someone would have suggested that I check the driver, so I shouldn't be too aggrieved. Anyway, hopefully now this post will be a useful resource for someone with the same problem, and save them the expense of replacing their hard drives.  

One of the issues with things like this is there is only one person with eyes on the situation. The rest of us out here can only go by what you report. And to us (me, at least), it looked like a failing drive.  

diapolical said: I feel I was being pressurized here into accepting that the drive was faulty and into replacing it, which is in the end not a solution at all, but what you do when there is no solution. Click to expand...
  • Feb 3, 2020

The reason I earlier mentioned ignoring tiny unallocated partitions is that often the effort to reclaim those slivers of unallocated areas is not straightforward, one has to sometimes jump through hoops with the disk partition software to reclaim unallocated areas and to re-size allocated and formatted partitions.  

The SMART Write Error Rate attribute looks very bad. In fact it has hit the threshold. The Calibration Retry Count appears to be related to the Load/Unload Retry Count. This suggests that the drive may be having occasional problems with its load/unload ramp. The Read Error Rate attribute is reporting a high raw value, but I don't know how significant this is. In any case, no sectors have been reallocated or are pending reallocation. I would keep an eye on the SMART attributes on a regular basis.  

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assign drive letter system cannot find the file specified

How to Fix the System Cannot Find The File Specified

assign drive letter system cannot find the file specified

However, the main issue can cause on the USB drive most of the time. That getting notification that your USB drive is locked by some third-party programs then you can’t access that. For example, while managing the letter path through Disk management. Then you face the following error “How to Fix the System Cannot Find The File Specified”. However, the reason might be clarified for you on Windows. That you have to format your USB drive using command prompt . To format the USB drive all the files will delete on the USB drive. Because this issue can be fixed only by formatting the USB Drive. Before, going to do that be sure to use any software taking the backup of your files.

  • How to Fix MSVCP140.dll Missing in Windows 10 – [Fixed]

Sometimes this issue can be fixed using powerful Antivirus, Windows update, use SFC to solve the error, Correct system log files, Update or Reinstall Drivers, Restore your missing files. But for fixing the following error I will MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Tool.

Step 1. Most of the times USB Drive may disappear from the list of Drives. Therefore, you can check it through “Disk Management”. Right-click on my computer select “Manage”, when the window opened click “Management”. Right-Click on USB Drive then select “Change Drive letter and paths”.

Change drive letter and paths

Change drive letter and paths

Step 2. After that, you will face the following error “The system cannot find the file specified”.

Error

Step 3. To fix that again right-click on the USB drive and click “Delete Volume”.

Delete Volume

Delete Volume

Step 4. Deleting this volume will erase all data on it. Back up any data you want to keep before deleting. Do you want to continue? so, click YES.

Click YES

Step 5. When the USB Drive formatted right-click on the deleted volume and select “New simple volume”.

Create New Volume

Create New Volume

Step 6. To create the volume click next.

Click next

Step 7. Select the volume size and click next.

Select volume size

Select volume size

Step 8. Assign the following USB Drive with a letter and click Next.

Assign letter

Assign letter

Step 9. Format the volume with the following settings and click next.

Format the Volume

Format the Volume

Step 10. Once the volume formatted simply click Finish.

Click Finish

Click Finish

Step 11. Now the volume is being created.

Volume created

Volume created

assign drive letter system cannot find the file specified

Install MiniTool Partition Wizard Tool

MiniTool Partition Wizard free tool is a free disk management software that favored by millions of users over the world. MinitTool partition helps the users to manage disks partitions. I think the installation process is pretty easy everyone can do it. Due to that, I didn’t make it important the provide you the screenshot.

  • Navigate to MiniTool Partition Wizard Tool then download it.
  • When it downloaded then launch the setup, in the first window select your language and click OK.
  • On the first window click next.
  • Uncheck “Disk Data Backup & Restore” and click next.
  • Manage the location where you want to install MiniTool Partition wizard free tool.
  • On the next window again click next.
  • Wait while the important components should be downloaded, once its done automatically starts the installation.

When the installation completed open up the MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Tool. Once it opened click on “Launch Application”.

Open MiniTool

Open MiniTool

Now on the main window of MiniTool right-click on the USB drive which you want delete its partition. Then select “Delete All Partitions”.

Delete partitions

Delete partitions

After that, a warning will appear “Are you sure that you want to delete all partitions” simply click YES.

Warning

Apply pending changes, Note: We strongly recommend you close all other applications before applying the pending changes.

Click YES

Once you clicked YES, then the MiniTool will start deleting the partition.

Start partition

Start partition

To make changes click “Apply” then click “Start now”.

Start

Once you clicked start, after that, you will see like below screenshot window. Wait until the surface scan should be completed. Once it completed click OK.

Click OK

Click YES to exit

Exit

Once the partition formatted via the MiniTool Wizard free tool, Right-click on the disk and click Create.

Create

Now in this step, choose a partition label and click OK.

Choose a partition label

Choose a partition label

assign drive letter system cannot find the file specified

Now, wait until it should create the partition.

Creating partition

Creating partition

When the partition created, for making the current changes on USB Drive click OK.

Click OK

That’s all about How to Fix the System Cannot Find The File Specified. I hope that the article was useful to you. Furthermore, if you faced any other problem feel free to share with me below in the comment section. In addition, if the article was useful for you then share it with your friends on social networks.

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