Read-only Folders

On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:21:24 GMT, (DK)
wrote:

In article , Alex Shaw wrote:
The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?

Are you trying to delete them and Win8 won't let you?
Even though you have what Win8 says is an admin account?

Yep, an admin account in Win8 does not mean admin privileges.
ONLY an account *called* Administrator truly has full admin
priviliges and has write rights everywhere. Insane but true.

DK
I thought that this could be the answer but instead I may have
discovered another of Microsofts famous "known characteristics.
I am helping a pensioners group to maintain their PCs. The single user
is called "Grey Power" so I attempted to change the name to
"Administrator" but the system claimed that there was already a user
of that name and would not let me. There is no user called
"Administator." I tried to create a new user called "Administrator"
but could not for the same reason.
I also noted that the folders (Documents) Properties/General stated
that the folder was created on 5th November 2014 but, of course, it
wasn't. The clock and date are set correctly.

On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 10:57:43 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

They're not 'read only' they're only marked as such? We read in
the referenced article that this behaviour is by design! Some
design.

Only because you associate together folder attributes and files
attributes. Different objects in the file system. Wait until
you get around to seeing the differences between the same-named
permissions for folders and files.

As I said, some design!

Alex Shaw wrote:
On Wed, 27 Aug 2014 13:43:34 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:

Alex Shaw wrote:

The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549

Tried this but it did not work.

Wouldn't you need to check/change the ownership first, to be
able to make those changes ? If the folder is owned by
TrustedInstaller, perhaps that's why Attrib doesn't work
for you.

Paul

Alex Shaw wrote:
On Wed, 27 Aug 2014 13:15:15 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:

On Wed, 27 Aug 2014 18:07:53 +0100, Alex Shaw
wrote:

The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?


The read-only attribute is not pertinent to folders.

So no, your folders aren't read-only, and what you are seeing is
perfectly normal. There's nothing to worry about and nothing to fix.

Read he http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549

When I open a Word document in a sub-directory of the Documents folder
and I cannot save it except by re-naming it it is something to worry
about for me.

The Documents folder has the read-only attribute set and when I remove
it is immediately re-set. This has the effect of setting all the
files below the Documents folder to read-only. The OS is Windows 8.1

Who owns the folder ?

That might be why you can't make changes to the folder contents.

Rather than it being that "hood ornament" of a "fake Read-Only folder bit".

Do Properties on the folder, and check who has Full Control.

*******

When you plug in foreign disk drives, you need to get some
"takeown" or "cacls" stuff to help you. Do *not* apply these
to the top of C:, as that would be a mistake. Apply selectively
to your data-only folders.

A two line script... For those who work in the command line.

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tims/archive...deletable.aspx

And the more common "Context Menu entry" method. The
..reg files, when merged in, add a Context Menu entry for
you, so when you right click, you can "hammer" the permissions
on the folder, and give yourself Full Control etc.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html

You should be able to open those .reg files in a text editor
for a look, before you merge them. Start the text editor, then
navigate to the .reg file. Make sure you have file extension
viewing turned on, so you can see the file extensions on *everything*.
You'll make fewer mistakes that way.

Untick this one (circled in red). This is one of the first
few things I change, on a new Windows install. Unticking this
should be the damn default.

http://www.homeandlearn.co.uk/BC/win...ns_db_view.gif

And use "Apply to Folders" to make it apply to a few more
folders as well.

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials...ndows-8-a.html

Paul

Caver1 wrote:
On 08/29/2014 05:12 AM, Alex Shaw wrote:
On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:21:24 GMT, (DK)
wrote:

In article , Alex Shaw
wrote:
The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?

Are you trying to delete them and Win8 won't let you?
Even though you have what Win8 says is an admin account?

Yep, an admin account in Win8 does not mean admin privileges.
ONLY an account *called* Administrator truly has full admin
priviliges and has write rights everywhere. Insane but true.


If you are talking about the built in Administrator, Administrator with
elevated privileges, the Administrator does not have write rights
everywhere nor can he see everything. Enable the built in Administrator
and see for yourself.

Let's take a Unix example.

I'm root. I open a file, edit, attempt to save. I get a failed
message. I can't write the file.

The permissions were set to 444. Which is a read-only permission
at all three levels.

So even though I'm root (administrator), notice how I was
stopped in my tracks.

chmod 544 gnarly_file.txt

Now, I've applied the write permission to the owner. Reenter
the editor, make changes, now I'm in. I've given my
administrator-owned file, write permission.

I was stopped by something I could eventually fix. And
now I have to remember to "chmod 444 gnarly_file.txt"
so nobody will know what I've done :-)

*******

I suspect a lot of things you see in Windows, could be
fixed in this way. The power is there to *eventually*
gain access. Is this a good model, the "fiddling" model
of security ? I don't think so. But I'm just a lowly user.

Apple has some automation, to repair system permissions.
It appears Windows lost any semblance of this, when
Vista came out. The table at the bottom, suggests a
person could "prepare in advance" for accidents. But
there's nothing there for the inevitable user accident/disaster,
where no prep was done ahead of time.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313222

Paul

On 08/29/2014 03:24 PM, Paul wrote:
Caver1 wrote:
On 08/29/2014 05:12 AM, Alex Shaw wrote:
On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:21:24 GMT, (DK)
wrote:

In article , Alex Shaw
wrote:
The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?

Are you trying to delete them and Win8 won't let you?
Even though you have what Win8 says is an admin account?

Yep, an admin account in Win8 does not mean admin privileges.
ONLY an account *called* Administrator truly has full admin
priviliges and has write rights everywhere. Insane but true.


If you are talking about the built in Administrator, Administrator with
elevated privileges, the Administrator does not have write rights
everywhere nor can he see everything. Enable the built in Administrator
and see for yourself.

Let's take a Unix example.

I'm root. I open a file, edit, attempt to save. I get a failed
message. I can't write the file.

The permissions were set to 444. Which is a read-only permission
at all three levels.

So even though I'm root (administrator), notice how I was
stopped in my tracks.
chmod 544 gnarly_file.txt

Now, I've applied the write permission to the owner. Reenter
the editor, make changes, now I'm in. I've given my
administrator-owned file, write permission.

I was stopped by something I could eventually fix. And
now I have to remember to "chmod 444 gnarly_file.txt"
so nobody will know what I've done :-)

*******

I suspect a lot of things you see in Windows, could be
fixed in this way. The power is there to *eventually*
gain access. Is this a good model, the "fiddling" model
of security ? I don't think so. But I'm just a lowly user.


Not in Windows 8/8.1, in XP you could.



Apple has some automation, to repair system permissions.
It appears Windows lost any semblance of this, when
Vista came out. The table at the bottom, suggests a
person could "prepare in advance" for accidents. But
there's nothing there for the inevitable user accident/disaster,
where no prep was done ahead of time.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313222

Paul



--
Caver1

On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 23:38:16 +0100, Alex Shaw wrote:

On Wed, 27 Aug 2014 13:15:15 -0700, "Ken Blake, MVP"
wrote:

On Wed, 27 Aug 2014 18:07:53 +0100, Alex Shaw
wrote:

The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?



The read-only attribute is not pertinent to folders.

So no, your folders aren't read-only, and what you are seeing is
perfectly normal. There's nothing to worry about and nothing to fix.

Read he http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549

When I open a Word document in a sub-directory of the Documents folder
and I cannot save it except by re-naming it it is something to worry
about for me.

I'd wonder about that, too. Was the file Read-only? (Not the parent folder,
but the file itself.) Are you trying to save it to that same sub-dir under
Documents? What's the full path to that folder?

The Documents folder has the read-only attribute set and when I remove
it is immediately re-set.

Yes, that's normal, as numerous others have already pointed out. At the
folder level, Read-only doesn't mean Read-only. It only means this is a
special folder.


From the link above:
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. When a folder has the Read-Only attribute
set it causes Explorer to request the Desktop.ini of that folder to see if
any special folder settings need to be set.

This has the effect of setting all the files below the Documents folder to
read-only. The OS is Windows 8.1

Before anyone messed with it, the Documents folder should have appeared to
be Read-only (it was not actually read-only; it was 'special') and the files
in and under that folder should not have been Read-only.

On 27/08/2014 19:43, VanguardLH wrote:
Alex Shaw wrote:

The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549


So exactly what anyone would try first anyway having found there was no
GUI based way to do it.

--

Brian Gregory (in the UK).
To email me please remove all the letter vee from my email address.

Alex Shaw wrote:

The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549


Leave it that way. It's system design.

Brian Gregory wrote:

On 27/08/2014 19:43, VanguardLH wrote:
Alex Shaw wrote:

The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549


So exactly what anyone would try first anyway having found there was no
GUI based way to do it.

What the article said: use a command. Guess you're too young to have
use MS/IBM-DOS and don't know about using the command console, either.
Console-mode is just a really simple UI where you enter text, just like
you do when writing a text in that smartphone.

On Fri, 29 Aug 2014 16:58:44 +0100, Alex Shaw wrote:

On Thu, 28 Aug 2014 14:21:24 GMT, (DK)
wrote:

In article , Alex Shaw wrote:
The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?

Are you trying to delete them and Win8 won't let you?
Even though you have what Win8 says is an admin account?

Yep, an admin account in Win8 does not mean admin privileges.
ONLY an account *called* Administrator truly has full admin
priviliges and has write rights everywhere. Insane but true.

DK
I thought that this could be the answer but instead I may have
discovered another of Microsofts famous "known characteristics.
I am helping a pensioners group to maintain their PCs. The single user
is called "Grey Power" so I attempted to change the name to
"Administrator" but the system claimed that there was already a user
of that name and would not let me. There is no user called
"Administator." I tried to create a new user called "Administrator"
but could not for the same reason.
I also noted that the folders (Documents) Properties/General stated
that the folder was created on 5th November 2014 but, of course, it
wasn't. The clock and date are set correctly.

There is *always* a user called Administrator. It is the user with full
privileges, more than a normal user of Administrator type has.

The thing is that that user is hidden. Let me repeat: *hidden*. And
special.

There are several ways to unhide it (him? her?).

The one I'm most familiar with is to open a command prompt window and
executer the command

net user Administrator /active:yes

Now you can switch user to that user, do your damage, and then log out
from him (her? it?) and execute the command

net user Administrator /active:no

to make it inaccessible to malware.

--
Gene E. Bloch (Stumbling Bloch)

On Fri, 29 Aug 2014 23:53:52 +0100, Norman wrote:

Alex Shaw wrote:

The read-only attribute cannot be removed from folders. I have
consulted the Microsoft site but to no avail. Has anyone cracked
this one?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549


Leave it that way. It's system design.

Some design!