All files from XP read-only... seriously??

Kakuri said:

I'm dual-booting Windows 7 and Windows XP, and everything on my XP drive is read-only in Windows 7. I've searched on this issue, and read a bit, and the information I've found so far is very dis-heartening.

Do I seriously have to take ownership of all my old files? This is incredibly stupid. And what effect does this have if I boot in XP? Do I then have to tell XP to re-take ownership of everything?

I can't believe how absurd this is and really hope it doesn't make it into the final release. I've run into minor issues similar to this with XP installations, but only with user directories, and only when XP was set to protect each user's files. Every single file I try and access is read-only - this is insanity! What has XP/Win7 done with the NTFS ACL?

You won't necessarily have to take ownership, although that remains the best way of doing things.

What you can do is boot into Windows 7, edit the security of the specific folders you want to access, and add your Windows 7 username with Full Access credentials. Make sure that those Full Access credentials are correctly propagated to files and subfolders.

Now, when you boot into XP, it should show up as an "Unknown User", but you should have access to those files anyway from within Windows 7.

Still, it's the better option to rather take ownership and dump XP altogether. If you really must still use XP, have you looked into Windows XP Mode yet?

Kakuri said:

Thanks for the info! My system has the same name in Win7 & XP, and I have the same username in both... I guess it uses an internally generated ID for ACL management.

Unfortunately, the specific folders I want to access are everything on a 500Gb drive - I don't understand why they would do this!

I'm trying to re-create my daily work environment in Win7, and while I use VirtualBox and may consider Win7's XP-mode VM, I'd generally like to just boot into my already working and configured XP environment when I'm having problems getting my work done in Win7.

It really seems like Win7's ACL management might still have some glitches - I verified that I am in my Administrators group, yet when I try and access files in a folder that grants full permissions to the Adminstrators group Win7 tells me they're read-only.

And of course there's the problem that the file attributes are actually set to read-only, and un-checking read-only has no effect.

Actually, you are half right.

It's not that Windows 7 has buggy ACL code, it's one of the features of the NTFS file system. The only possible way that I can think of to no longer require the need to change ownership or security permissions would be to convert the NTFS filesystems for both XP and 7 to FAT32.

Trouble is, the build-in "convert" utility in XP and 7 can convert only from FAT32 to NTFS - not vice versa, so you'll need a third party utility to so. Another drawback to FAT32 is the larger the volume on which it is used, the more space is wasted. It's not really very effective to use on anything larger than maybe 40 or 80 GB drives, and not to mention that it's far more prone to damage than is NTFS.

Have you tried yet (from within Windows 7) to add your user name (with full access permissions) to the root folder of the XP drive?

Code:

 
C:\Documents and Settings\user>convert /?
Converts FAT volumes to NTFS.
CONVERT volume /FS:NTFS [/V] [/CvtArea:filename] [/NoSecurity] [/X]
  volume      Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
              mount point, or volume name.
  /FS:NTFS    Specifies that the volume is to be converted to NTFS.
  /V          Specifies that Convert should be run in verbose mode.
  /CvtArea:filename
              Specifies a contiguous file in the root directory to be
              the place holder for NTFS system files.
  /NoSecurity Specifies the converted files and directories security
              settings to be accessible by everyone.
  /X          Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary.
              All opened handles to the volume would then be invalid.
C:\Documents and Settings\user>exit

Just to clarify this is not a bug in windows but a result of the dual rights system in use by default.

Although you are a member of the administrators group you are running as a standard user unless your rights are elevated. you can manually elevate rights by right clicking and selecting run as administrator, certain programs will auto elevate and produce the UAC prompt (if enabled), explorer is not one of these

If you wish to have full administrator rights in windows explorer run explorer.exe with run as administrator

In effect what you are doing when you add your user name to the file access rights is adding the non elevated standard user, thus providing access in explorer.

Kakuri said:

1. In Windows 7, Right-click on the drive and click Properties
2. On the Security tab, click Edit
3. Click the Add button and enter your username (I entered it in the format "<ComputerName>\<UserName>")
4. Check the "Allow Full Control" box and click OK.
5. Wait for it to finish.... enjoy!

This did not work for me?!?!?! I can't edit the tags of any of my .mp3 files and it's quite annoying.