Ooops - I've mucked up my folder permissions on Vista

Ok, I need help!

I installed the windows 7 beta on a second partition on my hard drive. I then realised that I couldn't see my data in my main vista partition... so I assigned it a drive letter and all seemed well.

Then I tried to add my music and video folders to my windows seven libraries - a dialog came up asking if I wanted to give myself permission to access these directories. Which I did.

So it all worked on the windows 7 side.

However, when I logged back into vista, I don't have write permissions on most of my disk. Some applications will not run as they need write permissions. I can't even delete files, as I don't have write permissions to my recycle bin! I should be logged on as an admin as far as I know.

I've tried resetting the permissions, but it doesn't seem to work.

Does anybody have any suggestions as to what I've done, and how to fix it? Short of using the disk image I created before I installed 7 to roll back the changes....

Thanks

 

You probably need to Take Ownership of the files, or more likely the folder containing the files. I've never done it in Vista, but normally you right-click on the folder in question and select Properties. Go to the security tab and slect Advanced. There should be an Owner tab where you can take ownership of the folder and the files within it. Then you can change the access rights if needed.

Now, I'm nowhere where I can test this out, but it seems to me that's how it was done in prior OS's. If that mechanism doesn't work, try and do a google search for taking ownership of files in Vista.

 

I'd try a system restore in Vista. That should fix it up.

Greg

 

He can try, but I don't think that the System Restore function restores file permissions. But then it's an easy thing to try that probably won't hurt anything.

To the OP...what kind of a Disk Image did you make. Many of them (like Acronis) allow you to restore individual files and folders. Is that an option for you?

If the Take Ownership idea doesn' work, and the System Restore doesn't work, you can try this to restore your security settings to the default:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;313222

 

Can't try system restore - it's turned off. (I don't remember doing that, but I must have - not a great decision)

I can restore individual files and folders - will they have the permissions attached?

I've changed the ownership of my Users/$username folder, which seems to have got most things working, ie I have write permissions now. but there are still a few things not working, I still can't delete from within that folder ( but I can from public ) and some applications can't see files within that folder now

I'll give it a whirl if I can't fiddle a fix of sorts. Thanks