Windows 7: Copy files to new PC - file permission problems

I've just bought a new laptop and I need to move my personal files from the old one to the new one. I've tried several methods, but they all give me problems with certain files: some files (and I have not been able to find any pattern here) will simply not copy over.

What I've done:
Move files onto an external USB drive and then copy them onto the new laptop.
Take out the old HDD and connect it to the USB port of my new laptop.

In both cases there are files that request admin permission before starting to copy, but the admin permission of my new laptop does not work for those files.



How can I get all my files on my new laptop with as little hassle as possible and without losing any files?

P.S. I did not set any special file permissions for any of the files and it looks like most of the files that won't copy over came from email or forum attachments, support downloads from hardware manufacturers etc. This has me even more puzzled since these files are supposed to be shared and should copy over without any problems...

Hi,

What type of files are you trying to move?

Regards,
Golden

I would suggest you "take ownership" of the files in question on the portable USB drive from your new laptop, and then transfer them. This is a regular problem with Windows 7 on files migrated to the OS from another source, and I find that PDF documents are often the worst offenders (depending on which PDF editor/reader you use) for some odd reason...

Take Ownership Shortcut

There are different types of files that give the same error. Some are simple JPG files (they have turned up black on my destination drive). Others are .dat .vi and.DS_sore files from National Instruments code block files.

Having a closer look at the possible location of the .dat and .vi files (I say possible because the file transfer window indicates the file name but not the location and I have dozens of copies of those files, each from another packageand not all appear to have the same behaviour) some of those files are in folders with the names written in green (instead of black). I don't know what that means (I've also seen some file names in blue) but I mention it in case it is helpful.

Hi,

Please try Qdos' suggestions as posted above.

Regards,
Golden

You can also use the Take Ownership on the entire external drive. Disable your UAC on the laptop till you get files copied over.

I added the Take Ownership patch to the registry and took ownership of the folder the offending files are in (somewhere 5 or 6 folders down. No luck though, I still get an error message asking for permission and then a second saying I need permission S-1-5-21-and a whole string of numbers to make changes to the offending files (also .txt .png... and all 107 of them in green)

Can you spell that out for me or provide a link? Thanks!

Sure, go to Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\User Accounts and locate the Change user account control link, click it.
In the next window slide the slider all the way down and click save. You will need to reboot to make the change.

Green folders mean that they have been encrypted :/

Are those your own files in there? Did you bitlocker them? Or are they things you can live without?

You won't be able to get access to those files unless you made a recovery disk OR if the original computer is still intact, you can transfer your user account (copy really) from the old computer to the new computer and then you can get access to the files in the green folders.

I'm on a Spanish Windows machine so I'm having some trouble finding certain options...

Encrypted? Not by me. They are simple downloads from the hardware manufacturer...
The old laptop is still ok (as soon as I put the HDD back into it), so how would I go about decrypting the files? Is there way to decrypt all files in a folder recursively or do I need to do that one by one?