UAC Prompting for things it's not supposed to

G

Guest

Vista UAC is prompting me when I am trying to delete or move some files. It
never used to and doesn’t do this for all files. This is so frustrating and
annoying. The most of my troubles are with files on my external hard drive.
Especially with video files. Every file I try to delete or move I get a
prompt, what is going on here?

Why some files and not others? Why did i never use to have this problem?
How can I fix this?
 
J

John Inzer

goorambatman said:
Vista UAC is prompting me when I am trying to delete or move some
files. It never used to and doesn't do this for all files. This is
so frustrating and annoying. The most of my troubles are with files
on my external hard drive. Especially with video files. Every file I
try to delete or move I get a prompt, what is going on here?

Why some files and not others? Why did i never use to have this
problem? How can I fix this?
==================================
Maybe the following links will be useful:

TweakUAC
http://www.tweak-uac.com/what-is-tweak-uac/

Is the "quiet" mode of UAC less secure?
http://www.tweak-uac.com/

--

John Inzer
MS Picture It! -
Digital Image MVP

Digital Image
Highlights and FAQs
http://tinyurl.com/aczzp

Notice
This is not tech support
I am a volunteer

Solutions that work for
me may not work for you

Proceed at your own risk
 
A

Adam Albright

Vista UAC is prompting me when I am trying to delete or move some files. It
never used to and doesn’t do this for all files. This is so frustrating and
annoying. The most of my troubles are with files on my external hard drive.
Especially with video files. Every file I try to delete or move I get a
prompt, what is going on here?

UAC standing in the way. It's Microsoft's idea of "protecting" you
from yourself.
Why some files and not others?

Because Vista really doesn't know what's it doing. This doesn't become
apparent to casual users since they rarely do anything beyond the
simplistic.
Why did i never use to have this problem?
How can I fix this?

Try this:

Part #1

Turn on your external drives. One at a time go to them in Windows
Explorer. Right click on the folder with the drive letter. Example:
Your external is Drive E: Click Properties. Click on the Security tab.
Under Group or Users name check if you see the name (user) you logged
in as. If yes, skip to Part #2

If you do not see the user you logged in as click the edit button then
add the user if you see it listed. You likely will need to click on
the location button and then search for users. You'll be somewhere or
you wouldn't have been able to log on. Once you find the user, add.
You as the user you logged in as should now appear in the Group or
Users List mentioned earlier proceed to Part #2.

Part #2

Click on the user you just added to the Groups and Users List or want
to change permissions for if the user was already listed and you
didn't have to add any new users. In the bottom part of the window
click edit if necessary to enable all the permissions for the user you
added. Ignore special permissions if there is a line for that.

Vista on it own should now start scanning your folders/files and add
the user's new permissions to the folder/files. It may bitch about
some. Hope it don't. If it does, click to get past them so it changes
the rest. Finally click apply then click OK to close all the Windows.

Now see if the nagging stops.

As to what happens Vista unlike XP and prior versions of Windows if
UAC is on will act like a traffic cop. If you attempt to do some
things Vista will blow it's whistle and not let your proceed without
nag screens confirming you want to do what it blocked you from doing.
In worse cases it still won't let you do some things. This is suppose
to be security. When you stop laughing, read on.

I and others answered this in brief form before. This response is a
bit more detailed. What you did in the above steps was take ownership
of your drive and with a little luck all the folders and files on it.

What often happens is some process or application may be seen as the
'owner' by the operating system. This could be the application that
created the file or something else or Vista has restricted ownership
to itself for a whole host of reasons we won't get into now.

As dumb as it sounds Vista don't care that you are the user of the
computer, you aren't the "owner" of the files you're trying to access.
We just changed that by adding whoever you logged in as an owner in
Part #1. In Part #2 you gave yourself full rights or permissions to
change/alter files. Once you do, Vista will stand up straight, salute
you and say yes sir, then quickly scan the files on the drive and add
the new user with the permissions you just gave that user. Since you
gave the new user full permissions the next time to do something Vista
will accept you as a valid owner or user of files you're trying to
access and hopefully no longer nag or restrict you, at least not for
routine operations.

As a bonus this often greatly improves the speed at which Vista will
now copy/move and delete files.

Just a wild guess, but I suspect one reason why file copying/moving
and deleting is so slow for some people is even if you have a user X
and a user Y and both have the same permissions, if things aren't set
up so BOTH have the exact permissions for devices you are transferring
between then Vista has a hissy fit. That combined with a whole bunch
of extra handles being opened, possible checking for DRM issues and so
on can impact the process but far more so on some systems, maybe
mainly because of permission issues.
 

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