Win 7 - File Permissions

[encorp]

I can't take ownership of two folders that seem to be associated with the user "Cam"

Since I installed my SSD I changed the name of my administrator account to something else.

I've gone through every folder and method possible to change permissions and take ownership; when I do it gets to "My Music" and "My Videos" and won't allow my access.

They are empty; I want to get rid of them. But I may just format this drive if I can't figure it out.

Any ideas?

 

[tzetsin]

those are considered system files by the os and cannot be outright deleted. If they are from a previous user, the only way to be rid of em is to go to user accounts and delete the entire user those folders belong to.

 

[jay51]

or you can use this Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista - How-To Geek
makes it easy, works great on xp to

 

[DCCV44.2223]

I don't think any of the "My" folders in Windows 7 are real, MSFT removed the "my" prefix to those folders in Vista but in W7 they appears as "My ****" in explorer but kept their shortened Vista names. If you open up an elevated CMD prompt (start > serach > cmd.exe > run as admin), you can see their "real" names and then use TAKEOWN to take ownership -- "takeown %userprofile%\music", or you can use XCACLS which you can find in XP support tools.

By the way if you just renamed the user account, you shouldn't have to take ownership or change NTFS permissions of anything since the account's SID remains the same. You should only have to change NTFS permissions if you created a new user account and want to access folders under the old account's %userprofile% tree.

 

[encorp]

or you can use this Add "Take Ownership" to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista - How-To Geek
makes it easy, works great on xp to

Yeah it wouldn't work since I outright cannot gain access anyways.

I don't think any of the "My" folders in Windows 7 are real, MSFT removed the "my" prefix to those folders in Vista but in W7 they appears as "My ****" in explorer but kept their shortened Vista names. If you open up an elevated CMD prompt (start > serach > cmd.exe > run as admin), you can see their "real" names and then use TAKEOWN to take ownership -- "takeown %userprofile%\music", or you can use XCACLS which you can find in XP support tools.

By the way if you just renamed the user account, you shouldn't have to take ownership or change NTFS permissions of anything since the account's SID remains the same. You should only have to change NTFS permissions if you created a new user account and want to access folders under the old account's %userprofile% tree.

You're correct, they are libraries/junctions.

I'll note your suggestion for next time, I moved everything off the drive and formatted it - hahaha.

The drive in mention is my "scratch drive" a 750gb WD black I use exclusively for programs cache files etc so there is never really anything on it that I'm worried about.

She's wiped now, I was just curious how to do it because it was driving me bonkers! Thanks everyone!

 

[DCCV44.2223]

they are libraries/junctions.

Not sure what they are. Having missed the Vista boat W7 is still fairly new to me.

There are "My folders" that are junctions, e.g., "%userprofile%/documents/my music". However, the "My Music" folder that shows up directly under the %userprofile% folder in explorer is not. It doesn't have the reparse point attribute (L) that junctions should have, doesn't show up in a CMD console DIR /A listing (it shows up as plain "Music"), and in 3rd party file managers such as 7-Zip it also shows up as plain "Music".

 

[encorp]

Not sure what they are. Having missed the Vista boat W7 is still fairly new to me.

There are "My folders" that are junctions, e.g., "%userprofile%/documents/my music". However, the "My Music" folder that shows up directly under the %userprofile% folder in explorer is not. It doesn't have the reparse point attribute (L) that junctions should have, doesn't show up in a CMD console DIR /A listing (it shows up as plain "Music"), and in 3rd party file managers such as 7-Zip it also shows up as plain "Music".

Yeah it's just a library under win 7.

Similar to a junction except it points to multiple folders across your system. Basically my music looks and acts like a folder except it's really a whole bunch of folders labelled as "My Music".

I set up almost everything in Win 7 to run off libraries so I have a constant back up drive with all my data on it and the OS points to everything on that other drive.

I have drives for compressed music and drives for uncompressed. I have so many music files in fact that I have drives listed as A to F alphabetically and they are pretty much full so I use a library to link all those drives together under a single folder.

Soooo handy.

 

[Desiato]

The Windows 7 libraries and junctions are not alike. The junction is the first implementation of a symlink in NTFS, deprecated by a newer version now referred to as a Symbolic Link in Vista and Windows 7.

Windows 7 -- and Vista I assume -- is loaded with symlinks for backwards compatibility.

Symlinks are handled at the file system level, unlike shortcuts and libraries which are handled by the shell. low level vs high level.

Anyone with unix file system experience knows symlinks well.