If you’ve ever tried to tinker with something in Vista and received a “you need permission to perform this action” warning, you know how frustrating it can be. Vista’s new found “security” locks down a lot of things even if your user account has administrative privileges. I ran into a problem like this when installing Adobe Acrobat Reader 8 where the installer didn’t have the permissions to run it’s own exe file, or something like that.
For this example, I’ll be giving my user account full read/write permissions for a random file. Again, this is just an example and I have no idea why you would ever need full read/write permissions for such a random file. The point is to show you how to overcome a “you need permission to perform this action” situation if you ever find yourself in it. Bookmark the page as you might need it down the road.
- Right-click the file and select Properties.
- Click on the Security tab.
- Click Advanced in the lower right.
- In the Advanced Security Settings window that pops up, click on the Owner tab.
- Click Edit.
- Click Other users or groups.
- Click Advanced in the lower left corner.
- Click Find Now.
- Scroll through the results and double-click on your current user account.
- Click OK to all of the remaining windows except the first Properties window.
- Select your user account from the list up top and click Edit.
- Select your user account from the list up top again and then in the pane below, check Full control under Allow, or as much control as you need.
- You’ll get a security warning, click Yes.
- On some files that are essential to Windows, you’ll get a “Unable to save permission changes… access is denied” warning and there’s nothing that you can do about it to the best of my knowledge.
- Reconsider why you’re using Windows.
That’s generally how the process goes. You don’t want to be doing this too often though. Should you ever get a virus in Vista, the files thought to have been protected, which you gave your account full permissions for, could easily be destroyed – not good if that’s a critical system file. This probably also works in XP but I haven’t used XP in a while. Vista is just a lot more protective about things so you probably never had this type of situation in Vista, or at least I haven’t.
This is not in XP at all, its a brand new annoyance in Vista, but as you said, it’s a security “feature.” To waste less of your time and doing this with each file, just disable the whole thing like this:
1. Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> System Config
2. Continue through User Account Controls prompt
3. Select Tools -> Scroll down and select Disable UAC
4. Click Launch -> Reboot machine
That will do it. Disables the UAC for Vista, making it like XP, which has no such protection “feature.” Although its probably not exactly the same thing, this seems similar to turning off “Component Control” in your Firewall, if your firewall has such a feature.
This doesn’t always work sometimes even with the UAC off, the problem still occurs.
Hi suggession solves the purpose, but this may be unnessary Trojan can write any files to the appropriate directrory.
sivaji
It doesn’t solve anything. I am the admin of my 64 bit Vista home and cannot get to my temp internet files. In Windows Explorer you can click on those files and folders and then click properties and there is no security tab or setting. This is a crap solution.
Bob, your an idiot and vista puts those temp files somewhere else. Learn to do research.
I just love it when people type “your an idiot.”
I done all that and still have the problem. I’ll try to unistall trend micro but some of the files are in the computer cant not get them out.any tips Thank you.
This is easy, just type in “Computer” at the start menu. Click on “Computer management”. scroll to “application information”, right click it and choose “properties”. Where it says “startup type” select “automatic”. that should give you the clout you deserve on your own computer. I assuming of course that you are the admin. The quotation marks denote the words as you will see them.
When you choose “Computer management” select “services and applications” click on services to the right and it will take you to the list where you choose “Application information”.
I am still having problems. Can not reach application information in your easy help! My huge challenge is getting RegCure completely off of my computer. Any further help would really be appreciated. I do check my spam mail, so I will get your reply. Thank you so much.
I agree this is how I have fixed file deleting problems. You know the one that come up “you need permission to perform this action.” Great information.
Andrew Swihart, this process worked for my computer where others failed. I found your four step process easy to navigate and self explanatory. Thank you for your assistance.
I’m not sure if this is the same thing as UAC as I already had that disabled when I wrote this.
The best way to go about this isn’t to set permissions on the individual file. Instead, to run the installer right-click on it and choose “Run as Administrator”, then you shouldn’t have any problems with permissions on this file.
I did that no luck hate vista.is nothing better then XP.
@Eric – that only works with exe files right?
Right. Was the installer that couldn’t access it’s own file an msi?
Until all of the third parties get their installers fixed there is another workaround you can do.
Open the Command Prompt with administrator permissions – Go the the Start menu, type Command, press control-shift-enter to run it as administrator (or right-click and select Run as Administrator). If you have UAC enabled you’ll see a UAC prompt at this point.
Then when you’re in the administrative command prompt you can navigate to the installer and run it from the command line. The installer will automatically inherit the Command Prompt’s administrative permissions.
I dont have vista, but i like your new comment thingy
This only worked a little. I installed AVG antivirus and a bunch of other programs in Windows XP, then upgraded to Vista. Vista was not compatible with AVG antivirus – and it also would not let me un-install the program (it was stuck), but no other virus software wold install with AVG still being present (I am in a paradox now). So I am manually removing the folder under program files, I’ve been locked out of non-essential folders and it’s very fustrating. Every time I try to delete these folders I do not have the permissions. The only workaround I found yet was to reformat the whole hard drive and do a fresh installation (which is utter nonsense). I have 3 PC’s getting ready for Vista but I have been put to a screeching halt now.
David, try the AVG removal tool http://www.avg.com/download-tools. I had the same problem and tried (even went to DOS to delete files), and AVG still not installed. So just a suggestion – not sure how you are with corrupt reg files. I had to go with Avast, which installed with no problem.
I have a new PC with Vista factory installed and am using AVG without any problems. (I downloaded it from their web site to install it)
Thanks for the instructions, they were very helpful. My situation was where I was trying to delete some file from an external hard disk that were written by another computer.
Helpful, but you have to turn the UAC back on for stuff like firewall and printer sharing – such a pain. Any solutions? Thanks
Followup on AVG – I have installed AVG 7.5 on four computers with Vista and it seems to work fine on all of them. This is the new Vista-compatible release.
Has anyone figured this out yet? I need to uninstall Internet Explorer and I can’t because, like you said, it’s vital to Vista….(yeah right). Let me know if you can figure out how to uninstall it! It’s not in the program list, I “don’t have permission” to delete the file folder, and there is an error when I try to change the permissions. SO…I’m out of ideas.
REMEMBER M$ is not resopnsible for all the junk “YOU” put into your box. It’s the responsibility of the manufacturers of that JUNK.
In this case, the “junk” is Vista, will you say they are not responsible for Vista too?
The problem is with the files in the directories. They have a “deny” attribute that trumps any permissions. Remove the deny attribute and you can delete any files you want.
Cheers!
GO SENS GO!
If you need to delete “important windows files”, or in my case, files from an old install…
1. make sure you have ownership of the files.
2. Change permissions so that you have full control, ensuring that you tick both check boxes on the permissions screen… “include inheritable….” and “Replace all existing….”
3. Disable UAC…. this is up to you as it just avoids a pop-up and so not necessary.
This should allow you to have full control and you will no longer see those annoying pop-up’s that you need permission
I now have an extra 7GB on my drive where that old installation was!
Hope this helps
thanks this worked for me
Regarding the original post, I had the problem where it said unable to save the permissions settings. However, after going through the process again noticed that somewhere along the line it will tell you that the properties box for the file needs to be closed after you take ownership of the file. When you reopen the properties box then you will be able to save your permissions changes.
to fix ALL vista related problems, do this:
1. start command prompt
2. type “format c:”, hit enter
vista will run a lot smoother after that ;)
I want vista to run smoother I opened cmd prompt put in format c: I was asked if I was sure Y N if yes your c: drive will be wiped clean. will all my files and vista be removed. thanks fp63vet
yeah, That’s the point.
Formatting your hard drive means wiping it clean. OS and all. Considering how much of a pain vista is becoming, you might be better on msDOS
At least everything’s straightforward
very smart a** comment sunny. go and slap urself for me :)
Whoot, fixed my problem exactly. I was trying to delete old AVG files from a previous install and it wouldnt delete them. This fixed it.
I am attempting to remove a file on my local raid5 array (setup on this machine originally for storage while using vista.) the properties box says ‘unable to display current owner’ and when attempting to change owners the error is “Unable to set new owner on ‘filename.vob’” Access is denied.
I’m going to attempt to workaround this by disabling UAC and probably returning to XP if these issues keep coming up. I’ve been using Vista ultimate since its release without many day-to-day issues but latley it seems like one thing after another -.-
Hi folks,
First off, can I apologise for being the most complete novice there is on pc savvy. Having said that, here’s my problem. I now have several files that I can’t delete after having d/loaded them from a torrent site. It’s giving me the same ‘permission needed’ message mentioned above. I’ve followed all the steps above, but the tick boxes are greyed-out and unchangeable. They do seem to be saying that I have permission anyway, however when I try to delete, the files still refuse to budge. I found this page by Googling the problem. I’m using Vista and would appreciate any help you folks can give a clueless soul like myself.
Thanks in Advance.
How do I get file Read and Write permission using Vista.
Hi,
When trying to install a network printer, I get an error message, “You do not have sufficient rights to perform this operation”. None of the suggestions above help me as I don’t have a file to change the permissions on. Can anyone help?
Thank you,
Dave
1. If the printer u wanna installed is not shared,you cannot installed it on a network.
2. If you log into the system as user u cannot install it on a network. An administrator would have access to do that.
3. Install the printer software without plugging the printer. When u are asked to plug the printer do and follow the on screen instructions. Attach ur printer, share it and access it from a system u have administrator access.
if you have a bunch of files to process, you may want to use the command-line approach:
1) take ownership of a group of files:
takeown /f *.jpg
2) change permissions to what you need:
icacls *.jpg /grant Everyone:(F)
Et voilà !
What a stupid lame annoying feature of vista. This is exactly the reason why i run ubuntu and xp instead of vista on all my personal machines.
Ok people why didnt most of you pay attention to the Original post –
The exact scenario is this:
You switched off UAC
You got 10000 files in drive F: – yes !? in 280 directories – OK?
now you set the file permissions for the root of drive F and give yourself permissions that over-ride all previous inherited permissions and extend to files and folders below the root directory. so first of all you take ownership
then you set your files and folders permissions to “full” then when you are certain youre the owner and that your permissions were set on all files and directories below root on drive F – you go down the folder tree to
lets say programs\security\antivirus\myav.exe – go to execute tha mother******** @$!*&”((*% thing and it tells you you dont have permission –
so you gotta set all the permissions on individual files and folders – its absolutely STUPID !!!
I am in charge of assessing vista for a company that was seeking to install it on 600 desktops but with such annoyances as this it hardly seems worth it when the wait for the real operating system (windows 7 ) will be over in 2009 or 2010 – with such stupidity built into Vista I can only recommend people stick to XP for business desktops because mission critical stuff will fail on vista unless you have tested it thouroughly for 4 or 5 months and ironed out the probs
I’m trying to delete a .dll but it still wont let me but it slightly deviates from what you said at first because after i check full control i recieve no security warning is this becuase my UAC is turned off or am i doing something wrong?
i was having problems deleting a file on my computer. i tried changing the permissions and the ownership but that didn’t help. it still told me to get permission. i even disabled the UAC but to no avail. i finally removed the users and group with access to the file except for the adminstrator. and it worked!
“Reconsider why you’re using Windows”
HAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Sorry, but I thought that was hilarious.
Just type in cmd: takeown /f c:\path to your folder or file /r /d y
The instructions in this post work great. In fact, it helped me just last week.
However…
I am trying to delete a BUNCH of scattered folders and files (which I isolated via windows search). It would take me 3 weeks to apply this process to each individual file (as vista won’t let you do this in batch).
For anyone wondering, I am trying to build an image for a new machine, and need to get rid of all the hardware specific video and raid drivers (inf files mostly).
This is a bear.
But if you are one of the lucky few who don’t have many files to contend with, the solution above definitely works (in fact, this is the first place I found step by step instructions on the web that actually DID work for this problem for those of us who have UAC turned off, and are in full charge of our machines, yet not really…because of microsoft….arrgh).
i moved to ubuntu linux after my experience with windows Vista…if you can’t even delete files and folders….needless to say, none of this crap happens in linux.
i pity people who use Windows. they have no idea what a good OS is like.
You can save the current ACLs (access control lists) to a file. You’de give full access to all the files on a drive and delete the ones you found. Once you’re done, you restore the ACLs of the files and folders left behind.
One little gotcha is if the restore tool bails on you when it reaches files that are no longer there. It should just skip them, but some programmers are newbies!
Jonas R. You rock! Thank-you for freeing our photos from our XP-Vista nightmare.
Help I am losing my mind. I got a new Blackbird with Vista (no choice on the Vista). Imported all my Outlook Express mail. Problems with Vista. Sent computer back. They reinstalled OS but now I am unable to get “permission” to reinstall my Windows Mail files. I’ve tried all the tricks above but it still won’t let me. The Windows Mail file folder says read only and no matter what I do I can’t get rid of it. I have years of email in there. Bista really sucks
No need to take ownership or whatever, here’s the fix and I threw it on my site.
http://www.super-crush.com/article.php/2008062104431822
what i’ve noticed as an IT is that most people are having the big problem because with a standard Vista install you don’t actually get full admin rights the only way to do so is to actually activate the Administrator account which by default is disabled to do so go to an elevated command prompt (right click and run as admin) then type: “net user administrator /active:yes” that will activate the actual admin account, to disable it do the same but replace yes with no
Thank you for your straight forward answer on how to set permissions on Vista. Finally was able to install iTunes and Acrobat Reader. Been searching for an answer for weeks and had grown very tired of reading posts by people who obviously just really like to hear themselves talk. Thanks again
THANKYOU. FINALLY WORKED. I HATE GETTING THAT STUPID ERROR, NOW I CAN DELETE BS FROM PROGRAM FILES. SAD THING IS I JUST FORMATTED MY COMPUTER AND IT GAVE ME THAT ERROR. IM RUNNING ON AN HP DV6000 – HOME PREMIUM. ANYWAYS, THANKS. :DDDD!!!!!!
I tried your initial fix and ran into a problem.. I got an error message: ‘access denied’ when I clicked Ok on the ‘permissions for docs and setting’ window. Thus could not procedd. There was a ‘continue’ button, then an ‘access denied’. On my user name there is now a little red circle with an X in it. What to do??
My Vista system went belly-up. On loading i get a message ” \windows\system32\winload.exe not present or corrupt”. Trying to repair it booting with the DVD-disk and using option “repair ‘ does not do any good as after a long while I get a message “vista can not do the repair”. Since then I have installed Vista on another harddrive so I am able to access the oryginal harddrive and didnt lost any of my data, but.. no matter what I do, I cant replace that corrupted file on the original harddrive with the good one I have on the current boot-harddrive.. I always dont have required permissions to delete that file and copy a good one in its place
(as this is “essential” file in view of Vista even if this is not a boot drive). What a crap.. I even tried accessing that file on my Linux box and guess what.. I am able to mount that drive with no problem, but then the same file permission problem.
The most i am able to get is “read” and “execute” permissions, but never “write”.
I had the exact same problem and did the same method above and didnt work. Ended up having to download a trial version of Unlocker to remove the problematic folder.
this doesn’t work if the file is on a cdrom or mounted disk image
furthermore, i have a few files even on my hard drive that this doesn’t work for
Jonas R you gave a great quick solution for me there. I needed to replace ehshell.exe, which is the Media Center launch file with my own small exe that simply fires off Media Portal. It works now! I can now hit the green button on my univeral remote and start up Media Portal! Thanks so much. :)
OMGMGMG THANK U SO MUCH
Just goes to show why so many people stick with XP
Im trying to copy an exe from a computer that is running xp
it wont let me copy or run these files
ive tried enabling the permisions and such on my destination where i want them to be copied to
But they still say i dont have permission
ive tried just about all the ways i see possible
ive disabled uac And ive given permissions
changed ownerships and such ? help???
[Note to moderator - I changed my email address from hotmail to gmail]
Well Blaide, you haven’t made a CD and tried copying that way?
Tried compressing the files into a .RAR/.TGZ/.ZIP archive and then extracting the archive once you get it onto the Vista machine? I’ve only heard of this problem with computers secured by an antivirus program or when you’re trying to do something that you need to (un)set a group policy for. Maybe the author knows of a way?
I don’t want to give out my email address on this board, but I want to use my Yahoo IM account to help. Is there a way to send private messages on here?
LOL is this you? http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/840018.html
It points right back here. If it’s not you, then at least you can share solutions. Good luck!
Thanks a lot !!! It really helped me.
None of the solutions here worked for me, but for my purpose, I found a way.
My problem was that my old XP machine had crashed, and when trying to transfer the files from the old harddisk onto my new Vista machine, I suddenly had no rights to move the files. I then changed the rights on root folders, and managed to get most of the files over, but I had some 300 jpgs left in various folders that could only be changed individually, in approximately 19 tiresome steps.
I tried some of the options mentioned here, like changing to admin and takeown, but it didn’t work. I got a message saying it worked, but I still could not transfer the files.
HOWEVER, I plugged the old harddisk to my girlfriend’s Mac, and she was able to read the files – but not write. But when she copied the files into another folder, the rights also changed to both read and write! Then, the files were transferred to a memory stick, and I plugged it into my PC and voila!
Finally a good way to use a Mac.
(I’m not sure whether Takeown had something to do with it or not, but if not, then it’s fairly silly if you can simply use a Mac to override.)
Thanks for this information. Very useful!
See you.
I have been searching for an answer to this question for years!! Thank you so much. Works like a charm. OUTSTANDING !!!
I’d be surprised if creating an archive and then decompressing it on the Vista machine didn’t bypass the permissions issue without requiring the user to know all kinds of obscure commands/GUI tricks. This would also work with a CD assuming you didn’t encode permissions (or didn’t use UDF).
I makes more sense that the person who setup the old machine set it up so that those folders are locked. That or a user with Admin rights.
Please donate your old boxes to a church-group or some needy student in these hard times! To comply with the law, and with Microsoft’s leasing policy, you can now replace Microsoft OS with the free (download from the net) Ubuntu OS, which can be set to erase the hard drive of all traces of the “illegal to give away ” Microsoft system and your private information, before donation! Now, explain to your lucky recipient that all the manuals they will ever need are available for free on the internet! Just ask for them in Google! OpenOffice, which is installed already is plenty adequate for homework assignments and with a little exploring, everything else can work well too! Happy computing!
Never give your hard drive to anyone, ever! Take it out and destroy it if you really don not want it. Beat it to death with a sledge hammer so that it will not be possible to recover any data from it, of course, do this AFTER you have formatted the drive.
Unless you get the arrogant type that says something like “yeah but what if I want to actually do anything” as if you need Office from the last year in order to create spreadsheets and type resumes. There are those that actually believe that lie. Actually, the guy that said that thought that I wouldn’t notice that he ‘fixed’ the computer that I was working on again – which turned out to already be working until he unhooked the sound cable himself!
It’s gotten to the point that I find [u]more[u] functionality from a fresh Ubuntu install than XP even after installing everything. Show them the search feature of Synaptic and I’ll bet most college students will love it afterwards. Vista is a nonsequitor to most of the people who can barely afford a machine with 1GHz CPU, yet alone 3+. Of course Linux isn’t exactly for those that have a hard time figuring out how to use Nero to burn a music CD…
I’ve got an issue with file permissions, involving a .exe file (more specifically, a server) that can’t open a required dependency (.dll). I’ve read every word of every post on this page. I’ve tried swapping owners, modifying permissions, and even went through the complete and utter hassle of trying “takeown” and “icacls” in the command line. Epicfail. I tried moving the dependencies, and resetting the configuration file, but I don’t have “permission” to do so, even as an Administrator. I’ve been working with computers for over 17 years, and I know my in’s and out’s of pretty much everything, except this has me stumped.
I know it’s a file permission issue, because the logfile from the server spits out:
* Loading IRCd configuration ..
* unrealircd.conf:11: loadmodule modules/cloak.dll: failed to load: Cannot open module file: Permission denied
[error] IRCd configuration failed to load
—
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Microsoft has the tools available to fix this problem. Look at this page: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/265360. You can download the two tools subinacl.exe and xcacls.vbs and use them to reset the permissions necessary to use all of your files.
It is a *really* bad idea to turn off UAC and run as administrator!
Regards,
Chris
This is quite an extended thread, which testifies to the problem permissions can be under Vista has become. Sadly, most Linux distros do not allow R+W to Windows NTFS disks (many now can access them however), without learning variations of suggested scripts (conversely, there is freeware that will allow Windows to R/W to Linux)
I am the only user, and have UAC in “quiet mode”, but run into the permissions problem occasionally, like one file among many others of exactly the same type in the same folder. Or one self created folder among many others just the same. I used to find TakeOwn worked, but lately it has not. But Unlocker has.
http://www.download.com/Unlocker/3000-2248_4-10493998.html
The link by Chris above looks like a good find.
i want to patch a .dll file and”you need permission to perform this action”
ive tried everything listed here but vista just wont let me pach the goddamn software!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks Paul,
Good, easy to follow instructions.
Hi,
This same problem was driving me LOOPY.
I stumbled on an answer that works for Deleting these crappy files that vista wouldn’t let me access.
Go to http://www.jwrmedia.com/reviews/software/remove-the-unremovable.html and follow the link to the free Unlocker app. Absolutely brilliant! Goodbye protected folder, problem solved!
Derek
I think the best way around this is to not use a windows product ever.
ty for the tip here a faster way right click on the program and just run as administrator like u usein internet explorere just right click on it and Run as Administrator
Andrew Swihart —> Thanks for the post…finally I can get these files deleted…… ;-)
WoohOOOO
Dale
I have installed Unlocker on a brand new Dell Studio XPS 16 that has Vista 64 bit Home Premium. Its in my Program menu but it doesn’t show up when I right click on any folder.
My work laptop is XP. I then installed it on that machine, and it worked.
I am totallly perplexed.
I found a method from another site that worked.
….Of all the websites I have been to about Vista permissions, (and believe me it is probably over 100), this is the most forward and easiest way to overcome the Trusted Installer issue by taking back ownership. Thank you very very very very very much paul stamatiou!!!!
The reason is that the 64-bit versions of Windows don’t allow that program to work. The 64-bit versions of Windows Server 2003 and XP have the same issue with that program, I’d imagine.
Thank you, this helped me out.
On dell vista business, I have tried the above instructions several times, and I get to step 12 but the check boxes are still grayed out. The owner of the file is lacking “special permissions”.
The only way I have found to transfer a .exe file over a network is to change the extension to .txt, then it transfers fine, and I just change it back to .exe on the vista machine. Bit of a pita. This may be a separate issue???
And yes I have reconsidered several times why I use windows, I am a LAMP programmer on servers, but the availability of programs for windows is unbeatable.
Cheers
Mike
I am so tired of this Vista crap, that I am ready to dump this shit and replace it with XP.
These damn asses at MS think they know what we want, and force us to do it their way.
I just had a little episode with WinHlp. MS put a dummy file on Vista ( why couldn’t they put the real thing there?) and protect it so tight it can’t be deleted or overwritten.
Tried to put it in Sys32, and Vista immediately erased it.
Bill Gates, go to hell!
Thank you SOO MUCH!!!! I wasn’t able to complete the Office 2003 install because I had a corrupt MAPISVC.INF that I needed to overwrite in the System32 folder, but as you already know, I had no admin rights to that folder. Your instructions were perfect, to the T, and was able to overwrite that corrupted file and continue on with my install.
Thank you!!!!!
step 15 doesn’t compute with vista.
I went to “control panel”, “users” (from Classic view)
“turn user account control on/off”.
Then uncheck the “user account control to help protect your computer” and OK.
Now I can delete all I want!
I thought I’d note down my luck with the advice you kindly provided, Paul. Sadly, for me, it didn’t work: even selecting myself as the owner, my name did not appear in any of the earlier windows. (I am already the administrator, not that that makes any difference to Vista.)
What I was trying to do tonight was copy two files from an XP machine on to my Vista laptop. It worked at 11.02 a.m., but not 16 minutes later, despite no changes having been made to the permissions on either machine.
However, when Vista claims that the destination folder access is denied, this was incorrect in my case. After much tinkering, following your advice and that of TheRob above, as well as many, many other pages on this subject over the last hour, I discovered the error had nothing to do with Vista.
XP (or a program on the XP machine) had, by itself, changed the sharing permissions of just those two files, which meant they could not be copied. Even though Vista said the destination folder was blocked, don’t believe it.
All I had to do was reset the permissions for the entire folder in XP, and the two files copied fine. Took all of 20 seconds, but I wish I knew that earlier! The inaccurate error message in Vista is deceptive and I hope users will look to other machines they are networked to if they have an issue like mine.
Jack that was a good observation, I will pay attention to that.
This may be a little off-topic, but it is an issue in both xp and vista.
Why can’t I copy a zip file? I know that zip files are sometimes virus-laden, but there seems to be an absolute block or ban when trying to import from a flash stick or from another cpu on the network. Works OK with a usb hard drive, that seems to be recognized as an internal drive.
I have found it possible to rename the zip file to .xyz or something, copy it, then re-name it.
Does anybody have any ideas for a global workaround here?
Thanks
Mike
Cheers… worked fine.
Damn Vista!!
Paul,
Your “permissions fix” just made my life a whole lot easier. I was about to “Format”. If your ever in St Louis, send me a note and I’ll buy you a beer.
Actually, the easiest and best solution is to take you computer and throw it off a building. I find it the stupidest OS in the universe for denying it’s own owner and admin permission for a simple thing as deleting a folder the admin himself created in his own computer, when the admin/owner had been the admin/owner since he bought the stupid thing and set it up brand new. Why would we ever mess with the permissions? So how did the permissions “change” to where now there are problems where before there were none? I’m so sick of Microcrap. If you don’t find my solution helpful, then sell it cheap and use the money to buy a Mac. That’s my next laptop.
hi
while run program i am getting the error like access denied for this folder and not able to download any software bcoz of this pls any one help me out of this
Im a VISTA user and I have encounter a problem were I change my security setting on my backup drive D: which contains media stuff which cause me to be unable to acess it….I change it back and some files were able to be opend but others wont…. so I have to change individual files to the normal authenticated users etc…..but the thing is it will take me alot of time to change bacause even my songs have been stuck with the same setting.
when I try to change the security setting on the entire drive only some folders and files work for me but others don’t and an error pops up
“error applying security setting information to:” the file…… I just want all the files to have the normal security setting…..
I kindly ask anyone knowledgeable to please help me on my computer….
please help me i need your help I really dont want to change one by one but if thats the case then Thats what I get…..
Thanx
great it did the trick!!!
My solution: Log off, then log back on. Then I can move or delete a file or folder that I wasn’t able to before. So far this has always worked for me (Vista Home Basic).
But logging off and on is time consuming, which is why I am here. I will try the Unblocker program mentioned in an earlier post.
I assume that the problem is a bug in Vista, or perhaps multiple bugs.
I started laughing while trying to follow the steps proposed in the article. That’s just WAY too complicated!
I came to Vista from WinME. I’m the only user of my computer. The first thing I did was to disable User Account Control. The whole permission thing seems quite un-necessary, ir-relevant, and for me, ridiculous. So far I have been able to ignore it.
I have done everything till step 12, it doesn’t allow me to check the full control option. What should I do?
I’ve done it! After logging on and off for three times…
Worked Flawless!! Removed stubborn Acrobat 9 Files
Thanks! Can you please teach Microsoft how to make simple straightforward helpful how to’s like this? ;)
I knew I needed to take ownership of the file but did not know how to get to the find feature that lets you select the user name. This worked perfectly!
This may be slightly off-topic, but this is the best forum I have found for vista issues. I just discovered a way to speed up vista performance.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/Optimize-Windows-Vista-for-better-performance
The path to the controls is a little different in my version of vista, but it is under control panel > system > advanced system settings > performance, and it allows you to turn off the graphic effects that slow down load times for all programs, pages and processes. I cleared them all, the only ones I took back were smooth screen fonts and background color. Now new screens pop up like they did with xp instead of waaaaiiiiiittttting for the screen to display.
Cheers
Mike
I am not an inexperienced computer user and recently was struggling to get rid of a “log” file in Vista. I know all about “users,” “permissions,” etc. and STILL couldn’t get the d**n thing to go away. Thanks for the help!
Having been in tech, building and repairing systems since ’79 when computers were more like dinosaur sized calculators, I’ve used several OS’.
For every person out there who says “If you don’t like it don’t use Winblows” or “You should switch to a real OS”, you tech savvy Trek fans should get a clue. Linux, Unix, DOS, I don’t care what operating system you use, it’s got it’s bugs and it’s glitches and it’s crashes. It has it’s annoyances. And what most of you are forgetting because you’re just so amazingly intelligent, is that the vast majority of ‘ware written out there is for MS Windows. It’s that simple. And half you penguins have a Win machine sitting somewhere by you or you wouldn’t be browsing these windows complaint forums. Stop being annoying. If you can’t say something constructive, say nothing.
Someone have much of a chip on their shoulder? ;)
In the trough of the next normal downturn of our Capitalist economy, Ubuntu will take over from Windows, and be installed in all the schools as well as civil services – this is the true reality in France, that other free republic! Even the french cops, of ‘flicks’ as they calll themselves run Ubuntu systems to save a buck and get trouble free operation. Microsoft was allowed by a misinformed asshole of a judge in the U.S. to patent a living language and the best programmers of the world have beaten them with Ubuntu and linux based (See your cousin at Mac) systems China and India, both Asian adn both using Windows 7 knock-off copies are beginning to prefer Ubuntu and other Linux based wares even with “free” indows available and semi-legal in their countries. Microsoft Beware Your days are numbered!
Well getting a bit off topic, but do you think anyone who’s already established is going to play fair? Patents on protocols and formulas are just the tip of the ice berg here.
If i try and launch “Disable UAC” it wont let me it says “access Denied”
ANd Its Getting me Really annoyed by the fact that i have tried to get this back to normal i have had it for about a month now and i am not happy i tried swiping my laptop (vista) but it said that there was an error and i have all the appropriate things for vista to swipe… please can you help me.
Much appreciated
I saved several attachments to a new folder in My Documents. I then renamed one of the files. After realising that I had made a spelling error, I tried to rename the same file – only to be told that I needed permission!!!
The file is held on a server and synchronised with My Documents. I have resynced but to no avail; I have reset permissions/ownership on the server; I have run out of money for the swearbox!
another thing is like they mention before is the attributes go to your program files and right click and uncheck the box that says “read-only”(files only inside folder) or something like that but that should give you full access after doing all the other stuff with permision andUAC. hope that helps .. helped me
Such a bad , after re-install OS, i can’t get permission on my files, tried everything, such a stupid OS I never saw…
When having problems with an iso image try using winrar to open the iso then extract the file to the destination, if it is put inside a folder u can cut n paste.
Just had to follow these instructions to delete a stubborn file in windows 7.
PeacebyJesus, uhh, no, there’s freewares that allow ext2/ext3 access from Windows not “access to linux” as you think.
Also you actually never found out about ntfs-3g? It does what you actually start to point out on some “complicated scripts”.
Thanks for the help great work!
i am running windows vista, with only one user, i cannot drag and drop shortcuts or change anything as i dont have “permission”. i just want to eliminate permissions as im the only one on my computer. Please help
The last step is the most important:
15.Reconsider why you’re using Windows.
I had to reinstall Windows today at work and had to opt for my Vista Business version as both XP cds are now corrupt???
Well I installed Vista no problem, I have never had a problem with Vista till our IT dept decided we had to change domain names to access the new Exchange servers. What a heap of s***…….
The first time round I had all sorts of bother with permissions when trying to install software after getting the OS set-up. I had everything working and then changed the domain name, rebooted and found I couldn’t install anything else. The usual story of the User Account Controls and the domain name change working together to conspire against me. What a waste of two hours.
So, I reinstalled and this time I installed all of the additional software we need for work before changing the domain name, brilliant I thought as everything ‘APPEARED’ to be working.
Now here’s the rub… I needed to get an old Windows 98 program working (yes I know) and I have it working in Windows 7 before anyone starts. However, in Vista there is a .dll file missing from the Windows directory. I proceed to copy it from my other machine and low and behold I can’t paste anything into Vista’s Windows directory. Why – because the directory and sub-directories are all ‘read only’.
I decide to uncheck the read only permissions and all the directories under and including Windows appear to be changing. The task finishes and… hey, wait a cotton-picking minute, the read only has reappeared. What the hell…
This is absolutely pathetic.
I have been all through the suggestions for changing permissions and Admin rights as suggested above over the last couple of years and nothing works at local level as far as permissions go. The only way to get permissions changed is for Network Admin rights to be allowed on your username. Well done Microsoft for making a decent version of Windows utterly useless to a lot of us that need to work through to the detail behind the simple and actually change things as required.
Thankfully I don’t have to work with Microsoft stuff at home.
The perfect operating system for me is Linux Ultimate Edition. It does absolutely everything I need. Web browsing, email, office apps, great photographic app called the GIMP. It plays DVDs, music and has the most extensive screen changing eye-candy you could ever hope for with a six sided cube that holds six desktops if you really need that many to work with (I use three or four). Ctrl+Alt+right/left keys to spin to the needed desktop and back again at any time. Every time I have tried multiple desktops with Windows something crashes. Wobbly windows and superb shadow effects are run-of-the-mill.
Plus thousands of programs (well hundreds any way) of all kinds just waiting for you to find for free.
As said above, everyone should reconsider why they are using Windows. It costs a lot of money. It needs anti-virus, Firewall, Mallware and all that stuff that slows down the machine coz it is all watching for things happening, maybe… probably.
Linux doesn’t need them coz the kernel of the Operating system changes with regular updates and not many hackers could be bothered trying to keep up with that and appart from all that all you need is your ‘root’ or Admin, password which actually works, absolutely no question and any software that you want can be installed, deleted and altered to suit.
What’s the big deal with Microsoft Windows anyways? Every scanner, printer, camera and mobile phone I have tried so far just works with Ultimate Edition whilst we have a HP printer at work that is less than two years old that can’t load or can’t use the patch that HP put out for Windows 7. Ultimate Edition is newer than Windows 7 and it can install and use the HP printer!!! the only way I have managed to get it to work in 7 is to install the printer on a Vista machine and share it across the Network, duh!!!
Okay that’s enough from me… convinced yet? Get a life…what else in this World would anyone pay for if you could get better for free. Bye…