Hi,
Sorry to hear you're having problems. A couple of things for you. Did you add this
"workfolders" folder to your PC or laptop? This is not a Windows System File. When you added it, did you use a local login account or a Microsoft login account? If you don't know the difference, basically a local account gives you all access to the files on your computer, but no access to the Microsoft app store to download or buy apps or games in the Microsoft app store. A Microsoft login account is associated with your existing E-mail address or a native Microsoft account such as an Outlook.com address or a Microsoft Live ID account.
Next, it appears you or the person you helping enabled file encryption or file compression on the W10 computer you are working on. In either case, this is bad in almost every situation unless you or your friend are advanced users, this should never be done. Especially if you are using a 3rd party program such as Bitlocker to encrypt your files and folders. Data compression should
NEVER be used by home users.
Period.
Most likely, this message is being caused by one of the new W10 programs that syncs settings between multiple computers for OneDrive, Microsoft's preferred Cloud storage app. It can also be caused by trying to put in Microsoft updates using the new
WUDO (
Windows
Update
Delivery
Optimization) program which pulls updates from both Microsoft servers on a weekly push basis as well as from other computers on your home network or from random computers on the Internet to update any other W10 computers on your home network. It's quite possible that the encryption and or compression you or your friend have done on that computer is causing the sync to fail with
WUDO, or the OneDrive cloud sync.
Both of these can be quite tricky to troubleshoot, but most likely to fix you are looking at either a Windows reset or a Windows reinstallation from factory media to resolve. First, though,
MAKE SURE THAT BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANY FURTHER REPAIR THAT YOU BACKUP ANY AND ALL PERSONAL DATA THAT'S ON THAT COMPUTER TO EXTERNAL MEDIA BEFORE PROCEEDING FURTHER!!!
After you've completed a current backup of your data on that computer, I suggest your use bootable W10 media such as DVD or USB stick to perform a Windows reset, or use factory media or factory built-in recovery partition to perform a Windows reinstallation. Generally, modern computers no longer provide discs or USB media with the computer, so if it's a store bought computer or OEM computer (Dell, HP, Acer, Gateway, etc.) you'll have to run a utility such as
MEDIA RECOVERY to make DVD discs or USB stick that will restore your computer to it's original
Out-Of-Box (OOB) condition you received it in when you first opened the sealed box the computer came in from the factory. If you need help doing this, please post back your Make/Model of computer and we can provide more specific directions for your make/model computer. When reinstalling your Windows from these factory discs or usb media, be aware that it will
ERASE ALL DATA from your computer; hence the giant warning in
RED above about having a current backup made on external media.
Next, once you've restored your Windows to it's factory state, do
NOT install or add any kind of encryption or file compression either built in to W10 or from any 3rd party program you or your friend installed previously. Once this computer is working on the Internet again, you can then use File Explorer to create a "workfolders" folder on your computer's hard drive. If your Recovery Media has you create a new login account, you can create a Microsoft account login if you didn't have it before, or if you did, you will need to recreate it on this computer again. If you follow the OneDrive setup from W10, it will ask you if you wish to sync existing or new folders to your OneDrive account. You might wish to say
NO to this, until you can test that you have access to this folder from your computer, and can copy/move/delete files into that folder using File Explorer. If you can, then you can go into OneDrive setup and add that new folder to your sync list and all should be well!
A caution here; if you or your friend have any other W10 computers on that same home network where this computer lives, it would be a very good idea to disconnect all of them from your home network while you are configuring this original computer with the syncing problem. This is especially important if any of those other W10 computers are using either encryption or compression on their hard drives also. Windows will try sync with them, and most likely will still give you the error you got initially. Once you get the W10 computer working again with the newly created folder, you don't want it to connect to any other computer on that network that is using encryption or compression or both.
If you get the reinstalled W10 computer working, you can reconnect each of the other W10 computers you have on your home network one at a time to see if you still get the error message. If you do, then, you are probably looking at having to do clean installs of W10 on each of those other W10 computers as well, one at a time until all other W10 computers with encryption or compression turned on are rebuilt with new W10 installs.
This last part about testing multiple other W10 computers may not apply to you, but since you or your friend chose to use encryption or compression without fully understanding it, it's possible that you may have repeated that scenario on multiple computers. In a home network situation where all these computers are connected in a LAN (Local Area Network), this can be disastrous as you are syncing these computers both on a home network and to/from computers on the Internet. This may not apply to you or your friend and you only need to fix the one computer. I mention as if you or your friend are using encryption/compression without understanding it, that problem could be repeated on multiple machines which would be a monumental task to fix as discussed above.
Let us know how it goes,
<<<BIGBEARJEDI>>>