After re-install, what is best way to gain access to moved libraries?

cwaters · 22 Sep 2012

I recently re-installed Windows 7 on my desktop PC. Prior to that, I moved the location of the My Documents, My Music, My Pictures, and My Videos libraries from my C: drive to my D: drive (a different physical drive).

After re-installing Windows 7, I encountered an "access denied" error when I tried to access my D: drive. When I displayed the properties of the root of the D: drive, I saw two entries:

Account Unknown (followed by a GUID)
PC1\Administrators

Obviously, "Account Unknown" corresponds to an account GUID that doesn't exist in my new Windows 7 install.

(My user account is a member of the Administrators group; therefore, I'm confused as to why I don't have access.)

I gave my user account Full access to the root of the D: drive; however, I still encountered "access denied" errors when I attempted to access any of the folders. I proceeded to give myself Full access to *all* of the objects on the D: drive. While I was at it, I removed the now-defunct "Account unknown" entry.

Is this the best way to proceed when re-installing Windows 7? Many articles discuss the advantages of moving libraries to a different physical drive (dedicated data backups, etc.); however, I have yet to find an article that describes how to proceed when doing a re-install.

lehnerus2000 · 03 Oct 2012

cwaters said:

(My user account is a member of the Administrators group; therefore, I'm confused as to why I don't have access.)

I've also experienced this behaviour.
It makes you wonder what the point of being part of the "Administrators Group" actually is.

Did you check/change the "Owner"?

You could try changing the Permissions to "Authenticated Users" or "Users".

I reinstalled W7 last month and I didn't experience your problem.
My Documents, Music, Pictures and Videos are all on different drives/partitions.

After re-install, what is best way to gain access to moved libraries?-permissions-2012-10-04-.png

gregrocker · 03 Oct 2012

The easiest way to place your User folders on another drive is to copy them there, then rightclick to link each one to the related Library - Include a Folder - Windows 7 Forums. Try this now.

If you reinstalled Win7 the folders on the data partition should have lost their permissions and now be available to link this way. If not install Take Ownership Shortcut then rightclick the drive and the folders to run it on each first.