Can't remove "read-only" on a directory. Driving me nuts!

[Dennis Edward]

This is on XP Home.

I'm trying to remove the read-only attribute on a directory. The directory
is "c:\program files\thq\spongebob squarepants\employee of the month\saved".
(I doubt this detail is necessary, but someone WILL ask...). My daughter,
who is a limited account, can't save games. I, who am administrator, can,
even though the directory is flagged read-only. Not surprising, I guess.

Trouble is, I can't remove the read-only attribute. When I try, the dialog
accepts the change, but if I pull up the dialog again, the attribute is
unchanged. The disk is NTFS.

Any help?

 

[Richter]

Try doing in safe mode...
Matt

 

[Ramesh [MVP]]

Hi Dennis,

For folders:
The Read-only and System attributes is only used by Windows Explorer to
determine whether the folder is a special folder, such as a system folder
that has its view customized by Windows (for example, My Documents,
Favorites, Fonts, Downloaded Program Files), or a folder that you customized
by using the Customize tab of the folder's Properties dialog box. As a
result, Windows Explorer does not allow you to view or change the Read-only
or System attributes of folders.

You Cannot View or Change the Read-Only or System Attribute of Folders
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=326549

Also, see:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=256614

--
Ramesh - Microsoft MVP
http://www.mvps.org/sramesh2k

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

~ Please reply to newsgroup ~


This is on XP Home.

I'm trying to remove the read-only attribute on a directory. The directory
is "c:\program files\thq\spongebob squarepants\employee of the month\saved".
(I doubt this detail is necessary, but someone WILL ask...). My daughter,
who is a limited account, can't save games. I, who am administrator, can,
even though the directory is flagged read-only. Not surprising, I guess.

Trouble is, I can't remove the read-only attribute. When I try, the dialog
accepts the change, but if I pull up the dialog again, the attribute is
unchanged. The disk is NTFS.

Any help?

 

[David Candy]

It's irrelevent. Type file permissions in help. Your folder isn't read only and nor is explorer telling you that (it won't tell you ever what it is).

 

[Dennis Edward]

Hi Dennis,

For folders:
The Read-only and System attributes is only used by Windows Explorer to
determine whether the folder is a special folder, such as a system folder
that has its view customized by Windows (for example, My Documents,
Favorites, Fonts, Downloaded Program Files), or a folder that you customized
by using the Customize tab of the folder's Properties dialog box. As a
result, Windows Explorer does not allow you to view or change the Read-only
or System attributes of folders.

You Cannot View or Change the Read-Only or System Attribute of Folders
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=326549

Thanks, but this didn't help. None of the suggested changes worked, or made
it possible for my daughter's account to save game status in the directory.
And as to David Candy's comment about reading the help file, that's the
first thing I did. One of the first things the help file says is to right
click on the directory and select the "security" tab. Guess what? No
security tab, and no indication of why it's not there. And yes, I am an
administrator. I even tried it with being actually logged on as
"administrator", with no change. There's a picture of the contents of a
security tab in my "Windows XP Bible", which looks like it *would* solve my
problem, but of course there's no indication of why *I* don't have that tab
available.

It looks to me like there are two ways that I could fix this: either change
ownership of the directory to my daugter's login, or change the settings for
the "limited" account group so that it can modify all non-private files and
directories. Of course, as usual, the windows help gives no indication of
how to do this. The administration program just puts me into a loop,
alternating between two dialogs, neither of which has the capabilities I
need.

 

[David Candy]

Try reading the whole page as it gives directions on how to show the security tab. The directions are different for home/pro.

In Pro it says point 1 -4 then a sub heading saying Important with the text saying click here to see how to display security tab. Followed by a bulleted list of notes.

 

[Dennis Edward]

Try reading the whole page as it gives directions on how to show the
security tab. The directions are different for home/pro.

I did and it doesn't. But I found the answer to that on Doug Knox's web
site. Of course, the problem PC is running XP Home, so I have to go to safe
mode. Windows help is completely out to lunch on that one too, but I found
out how to do that in my "XP Bible" book.

Oops. Turns out that "safe mode" doesn't help with XP Home. Still no
security tab.

In the end, the fix for this is going to be a 5 minute item, but it'll have
taken about 6 hours to get to it.

 

[David Candy]

Post your help page here if you don't mind.

There is a command line utility called cacls that is in home. Type that in help. But in home the security tab should be shown in safe mode.

cacls "C:\Program Files\Tools" /t /e /c /p "david candy:f"

Grants me full permissions to tools folder.

 

[Dennis Edward]

Post your help page here if you don't mind.

There is a command line utility called cacls that is in home. Type that in

help. But in home the security tab should be shown in safe mode.

cacls "C:\Program Files\Tools" /t /e /c /p "david candy:f"

Grants me full permissions to tools folder.

There were 27 hits in the help file search. Bit much to post. Anyway, after
my comment about 6 hours worth of effort, I decided to just use a large
hammer instead of finessing it. I reinstalled the game outside of the
program files tree, recreated the saved folder under tina's account, and
voila! Of course, this isn't an ideal solution since my wife still wouldn't
be able to save her games, but I don't expect that to be a real problem.....

As often happens, I'll probably learn the solution to this one while beating
my head against some entirely unrelated problem, and I'll fix it properly
then.

 

[Ramesh [MVP]]

If the security tab is missing, try entering Safe Mode and disable simple
file sharing. You can configure the permissions as in Windows 2000 then.

--
Ramesh - Microsoft MVP
http://www.mvps.org/sramesh2k

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

~ Please reply to newsgroup ~

Post your help page here if you don't mind.

There is a command line utility called cacls that is in home. Type that in

help. But in home the security tab should be shown in safe mode.

cacls "C:\Program Files\Tools" /t /e /c /p "david candy:f"

Grants me full permissions to tools folder.

There were 27 hits in the help file search. Bit much to post. Anyway, after
my comment about 6 hours worth of effort, I decided to just use a large
hammer instead of finessing it. I reinstalled the game outside of the
program files tree, recreated the saved folder under tina's account, and
voila! Of course, this isn't an ideal solution since my wife still wouldn't
be able to save her games, but I don't expect that to be a real problem.....

As often happens, I'll probably learn the solution to this one while beating
my head against some entirely unrelated problem, and I'll fix it properly
then.

 

[Kent W. England [MVP]]

If you are up to figuring out NT/2K/XP file and folder permissions, you
can add the Security tab back into XP Home Edition. I will also post
below my standard advice for using cacls.exe and regedit.exe to change
folder permissions to allow limited users to run apps that only admins
can run, but David already gave you the clues to do that.

There is a hack to install the NT4 Security Configuration Editor that
will put a security tab in Home Edition in normal mode, but I recommend
a little-known utility that will create an "Edit Security" context item
and will show the proper security tab in Properties and Sharing and
Security.

http://www.fajo.de/sware/files/xpfse/FJXPFileSecExt_0_2_Setup_EN.exe



If your game or application works with admin accounts, but not with
limited accounts, you can fix it to allow limited users to access the
program files folder with "change" capability rather than "read" which
is the default.

C:\>cacls "Program Files\appfolder" /e /t /p users:c

where "appfolder" is the folder where the application is installed.

If you wish to undo these changes, then run

C:\>cacls "Program Files\appfolder" /e /t /p users:r

If you still have a problem with running the program or saving settings
on limited accounts, you may need to change permissions on the registry
keys. Run regedit.exe and go to HKLM\Software\vendor\app, where
"vendor\app" is the key that the software vendor used for your specific
program. Change the permissions on this key to allow Users full control.

 

[Dennis Edward]

Thanks. I will try that. The cacls results when I first tried it were kind
of alarming.