Fail permission to access desktop icons.

[John Monahan]

I have had the strangest thing happen to me. I have WindowsXP on a laptop.
It has worked for well over a year fine.Then suddenly I cannot open (most)
files I have as icons on my desktop. I am the only user and have
administrator status. For example if a click on the Microsoft Word icon. It
comes up with:-

"Windows cannot access the specified device, path or file. You may not have
permission to access the item".

If on the other hand I select the word program from the start/menu system it
comes up fine. Many (but not all) of my icons are now behaving like this. I
cannot figure out what happened. Since I am an administrator why can I
access everything? If I make a new user the (new) desktop icons work fine,
but most of my original desktop icons and program data is missing.

Would really like suggestions. What do you think is the cause. Is there an
easy fix. Is there an easy way to drop all my icons/data access etc to the
new user I created and simply delete the old one.

 

[Nightowl]

John Monahan wrote on Tue, 9 Aug 2005:

Would really like suggestions. What do you think is the cause. Is there an
easy fix. Is there an easy way to drop all my icons/data access etc to the
new user I created and simply delete the old one.

Hello John

This is the fourth time I have seen you post this, and the fourth time I
am replying. Are you not seeing the replies, or just ignoring them?

Anyway. . . I asked if you could right-click on one of the misbehaving
icons, choose Properties, look at the General tab and see what is there
for Location. I'm not talking about the Target the shortcut is pointing
at, but the location of the shortcut itself.

Could you try that and let us know the exact path?