Hello Paragon People!

I recently purchased a seat for your ExtFS File System for Windows and while overall the experience has been positive so far, from the start I've had an issue using the product and have tried to remediate it from several different angles with no success. I now turn to you for your guidance and expertise.

The issue is that while I can mount volumes with ease either in RO or R/W mode and file system access speed is adequate, the driver doesn't expose the hidden files and folders on my ext4 volumes no matter what I do. Since you make a product that interfaces with Linux drives I'm sure I don't need to belabor the fact that when working in *nix environments you literally spend half your day accessing and modifying hidden files and files in hidden folders. I've uninstalled your software and scrubbed the entire file system and registry of any traces of Dokany, reinstalled your software and the result is the same. I've tried manually installing Dokany once your install is complete (both versions 1.1 and 1.2) and there was no change other than accessing the ext4 drives was noticeably faster with version 1.2, the files and folders beginning with a '.' were absent. I've uninstalled Keybase since they use a modified Dokany framework to serve up their cloud storage in the Windows File Explorer, uninstalled then reinstalled your product after that: no change. BIOS is the latest 1.46 that was released two months ago, all other drivers are bleeding edge up-to-date, Windows is the 1803 Build called April Release, there is no third-party security software to foul other processes up...I don't know what else to tell you.

Naturally I've toggled all the pertinent settings values in the File Explorer, from 'Show Hidden Files' to 'Display protected operating system files' several times to no avail. I've even added your install point in %ProgramFiles% to the system PATH environment variable just to be thorough. You might have intuited already that I'm an IT lifer so to speak, with experiences in exactly these sorts of problems that is not insignificant, and that I don't like to bother anyone with my problems unless absolutely necessary since that's basically the raison d'être of IT departments and their staff across the globe. I've reached the end of my insight on this one though, and would really appreciate any thoughts you might have for me on how to resolve this. Just for shits and giggles I even tried mounting the drive with your software and then opened the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) install of Ubuntu I use when I can't get out of Windows and attempted to see if the files were visible there. No shocker to anyone that it was a very short dead end street since WSL has to make its file operations calls through VolFs and DrvFs in the Windows kernel, and Microsoft continues to play ostrich with ext*.

I think I've given you all of the pertinent details but let me know if there's anything more you need. This isn't time sensitive per se, but it has become something of a crusade for me over the last week.

Naturally all of the hardware particulars are to follow, and I hope you enjoy the rest of the weekend.

-Peter

--------------------------------------------

Quick rundown on the environment particulars:

Lenovo ThinkPad T420s, Core i7-2620M, 8GB RAM, nVIDIA NVS 4200M discrete graphics, Intel 7260 802.11AC + BT 4.0LE wireless card, operating from a Series 3 USB3.0 Lenovo laptop dock with 170W AC input so everything has plenty of power.
Primary Storage: 500GB SSD running from the mSATA slot, GPT formatted with standard partitions housing NTFS volumes for Windows 10 Pro, Version 1803 operations.
Secondary Storage: 380GB Hitachi 7200RPM SATA-III HDD, GPT formatted with various and sundry ext4 volumes for Kubuntu 18.04.1 operations.
Tertiary (Removable) Storage: 750GB Western Digital Blue 5400RPM mounted in the Ultrabay III Caddy where the DVD-R drive used to be, with a full SATA-III pipeline as well, GPT formatted into two equal size volumes, one ext4 and one NTFS.

System boots UEFI-only with Secure Mode disabled, rEFInd manages the boot process and the entire setup runs like a Swiss watch. (Seriously, I adore this little laptop, best computer I've ever bought, 6 years together and still crazy in love.) Nobody believes how fast it runs without sitting down at it for themselves.