Files go to READ ONLY without reason.

[Seth]

On a WinXPpro SP1 peer to peer network with simple file sharing DISabled....
I have files on a file server that are becoming READ ONLY without any user
input. Computers are running 24/7 and the problem always happens during the
night when nobody is logged in. When I log in first thing in the morning,
certain files are READ ONLY when they should not be.

A reboot of the machine that has the READ ONLY files on it, turns the files
back into READ/WRITE.

Weird. Any ideas?

Seth

 

[Seth]

Thanks for the reply JJ. Files are being copied to another location for
backup purposes. Other files in the same folder that are also being backed
up are not becoming read only.

Seth

 

[jj]

Seth, with the available information, I can only imagine these scenarios,
that you most probably already thought of:
- those files take an unusually long time to copy to the backup location
(are they always the biggest files in size?)
- an antivirus program did not complete an on-access scan (are these files
large ZIP archives? encrypted?)
- the files have a special extension that XP recognizes as system files
- somehow the indexing service keeps the files open longer than normal (???
are they humongous Office documents? encrypted?)
- the files are accessed from the outtside some other way, and that access
takes a very long time, or times out (are the files available through a web
or ftp site to the outside?)

 

[Seth]

Thanks for the thoughts JJ. I really think you are on the right track. The
backup routine I was running was failing for lack of disk space on portable
hard drives. I replaced the drives with larger ones and so far my read only
problem has gone away. I think the problems created by copy failures were
the cause of the read only phenomenon. We'll see.

Thanks for taking the time to provide your input. You came up with some
interesting thoughts that would not have occurred to me.

Seth