Help with cacls in WinXP Home

[Lance Belka]

Hi,

Here's my problem:
I had a laptop running windows XP Home. My girlfriend was
using it, and the battery went dead. When she plugged it
in, the power apparently shorted out, and the computer
will no longer start.

I'm trying to back the hard drive from the laptop up on a
desktop computer which is also running WinXP Home. The
most important files are in the desktop and documents
folders of my previous login (D:\Documents and
Settings\Lance\desktop\, etc.) . When I tried to open that
login's directory (D:\Documents and Settings\Lance), I got
the "access denied" message.

I tried a couple of things, including recreating my old
login with the same access privileges and and password.
That didn't work. So I read about the CACLS command, and
decided to try that. I logged in as administrator, opened
the command prompt, and went to the D: Drive. I typed:

cacls *.* /t /e /g everyone:f /c

At first, this seemed to work. It did give me access to
the main directory for the login, but all of the
subdirectories still denied me access.

I rebooted a couple of times, then I opened the command
prompt, went to the parent directory for my login
(D:\Documents and Settings\Lance) and again typed

cacls *.* /t /e /g everyone:f /c

Every file in the directory denied me access besides
ntuser.ini. Can anyone out there help me unlock the rest
of the files?

 

[Taurarian]

Have you tried:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q308421&
HOW TO: Take Ownership of a File or Folder in Windows XP
NOTE: You must be logged on to the computer using an account that has
administrative privileges. If you are running Windows XP Home Edition, in
order to have access to the Security tab, you must first start in Safe Mode
and log on with an account that has Administrative rights.

As to your original request, all the information I have of CACLS:

Start>Run - type "cmd" without the quotes and then press enter
Then type: cacls /?

Caution:
Just because you can set permissions with Cacls doesn't mean you should.
It's easy to make a mistake that causes you to lose existing permissions on
a file. Try the Cacls command on a test folder first and make sure that your
settings have the desired effect before you use this command on your actual
working files.



Further information on setting Permissions from the Command Prompt using
Cacls:-



Cacls.exe provides another way to view and edit permissions. With Cacls
(short for Control ACLs), you can view existing permissions by typing cacls
filename at a command prompt, replacing filename with the name of the file
or folder you're interested in (wildcards are acceptable as well).



Next to each user account name, Cacls displays a single letter for any of
three standard permission settings:



F for Full Control,

C for Change,

R for Read.



You can also set permissions with Cacls.



Command-line Switches for Cacls.exe

Switch What It Does

/T Changes permissions of specified files in the
current directory and all subdirectories

/E Edits access control list instead of replacing
it

/C Continues on "access denied" errors

/G usererm Grants specified user access rights; if used without /E,
completely replaces existing permissions

/R user Revokes specified user's access rights (must be
used with /E)

/P usererm Replaces specified user's access rights

/D user Denies access to specified user



In conjunction with the /G and /P switches, use one of the following four
letters where indicated by the perm placeholder:

a.. F (for full control) is equivalent to selecting the Allow box next to
Full Control on the Security tab.
b.. C (for change) is equivalent to selecting the Allow box for Modify.
c.. R (for read) is equivalent to selecting the Allow box for Read &
Execute.
d.. W (for write) is equivalent to selecting the Allow box for Write.


Note that wildcards can be used to specify more than one file in a command
and that you can specify more than one user in a command. For instance, if
you've created a subfolder called Archives in the Shared Documents folder
and you want Carl to have Full Control and Craig to have Read permissions in
that folder, open a command prompt window, navigate to the Shared Documents
folder, and type the following command:



cacls archives /g carl:f craig:r

If you then decide that you want to revoke Craig's access rights and give
Read permissions to the Administrators group, type this command:



cacls archives /e /r craig /g administrators:r



Caution


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

Just because you can set permissions with Cacls doesn't mean you should.
It's easy to make a mistake that causes you to lose existing permissions on
a file. Try the Cacls command on a test folder first and make sure that your
settings have the desired effect before you use this command on your actual
working files.