Re: Access denied to All Users/Documents folder

[Michael Solomon \(MS-MVP Windows Shell/User\)]

I am running XP Home and found that when Adobe Acrobat is
distributing to my computer through Novell, it fails. It
seems this is because it is trying to write files to the
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents folder.
This should not be a problem, except that my folder is
somehow Read-Only. What's worse, I cannot change the
attributes or even see the contents of this folder, even
though I am the administrator on this computer. How can
I reset the attributes for the All Users folder (the
whole thing is Read-Only) and allow access to the
Documents folder within it?

Correct, you cannot change the attributes of a folder in XP only the files
within it. That said, this does not sound like an attribute issue. This
sounds like a file ownership issue related to NTFS. Note, file ownership
and permissions supersede administrator rights. How you resolve it depends
upon which version of XP you are running.


XP-Home



Unfortunately, XP Home using NTFS is essentially hard wired for "Simple File
Sharing" at system level.

However, you can set XP Home permissions in Safe Mode. Reboot, and start
hitting F8, a menu should eventually appear and one of the
options is Safe Mode. Select it. Note, it will ask for the administrator's
password. This is not your administrator account, rather it is the
machine's administrator account for which users are asked to create a
password during setup.

If you created no such password, when requested, leave blank and press
enter.

Open Explorer, go to Tools and Folder Options, on the view tab, scroll to
the bottom of the list, if it shows "Enable Simple File Sharing" deselect it
and click apply and ok. If it shows nothing or won't let you make a change,
move on to the next step.

Navigate to the files, right click, select properties, go to the Security
tab, click advanced, go to the Owner tab and select the user that was logged
on when you were refused permission to access the files. Click apply and
ok. Close the properties box, reopen it, click add and type in the name of
the user you just enabled. If you wish to set ownership for everything in
the folder, at the bottom of the Owner tab is the following selection:
"Replace owner on subcontainers and objects," select it as well.

Once complete, you should be able to do what you wish with these files when
you log back on as that user.



XP-Pro



If you have XP Pro, temporarily change the limited account to
administrative. First, go to Windows Explorer, go to Tools, select Folder
Options, go to the View tab and be sure "Use Simple File Sharing" is not
selected. If it is, deselect it and click apply and ok.



If you wish everything in a specific folder to be accessible to a user,
right click the folder, select properties, go to the Security tab, click
Advanced, go to the Owner tab,
select the user you wish to have access, at the bottom of the box, you
should see a check box for "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects,"
place a check in the box and click apply and ok.

The user should now be able to perform necessary functions on files in the
folder even as a limited account. If not, make it an admin account again,
right click the folder, select Properties, go to the Security tab and be
sure the user is listed in the user list. If not, click add and type the
user name in the appropriate box, be sure the user has all the necessary
permissions checked in the permission list below the user list, click apply
and ok.

That should do it and allow whatever access you desire for that folder even
in a limited account.

 

[Harried]

"Access Denied"

Hi Experts,

My laptop [running XP Professional] recently encountered an error "autochk program not found; skipping autochk" [this leads to the blue-screen that reads: "Stop c000021a {fatal system error} The Session Manager Initialization system process terminated unexpectedly with the status of 0xc000003a (0x00000000 0x000000) the system has been shut down"]. I have tried the remedies suggested elsewhere about system not finding the hidden partition and so on. That hasn't helped. The system does not boot in the safe mode, or from the Windows XP CD. The "autochk program not found; skipping autochk" error endlessly keeps recurring.

As an alternative, I have bought a 2.5 external hard drive USB enclosure to make the laptop hard drive into an external one to be used on other computers so that I could retrieve the data. The folders are visible, but when I try opening the folders, the access is denied. Now, my hunch is that this is due to the fact that my log-in into my account on the laptop [there was one another user account] was password enabled.

Somehow, the suggestions made on this thread, e.g. "Use Simple File Sharing" on the View tab of Folder Options does not even appear in my explorer, so there is not chance of me deselecting it, and there is no Security [font=&quot][/font] tab under properties of a folder, only "Sharing" tab, which does not still give me any access.

I am logged on as an administrator on the computer on which I am trying to use this laptop hard drive as an external one.

Is there a way of accessing the files? Please help. My sincere thanks go out your way.

Harried