Stacman:
Start an Elevated Command Prompt and type:
J:What files are listed? Anything with the .lnk is a shortcut and can be ignored. Are your actual files and folders shown using the above command?
dir /a
Last edited by writhziden; 06 Feb 2012 at 14:20. Reason: Stacman; clarify shortcuts
It was -10 Celsius when I walked the dog this morning around 8AM. The sun was out and we were sheltered in the woods so it wasn't that bad actually. It's just creeping up to 0 c now at a little after 3PM. I don't know whats going on with your system? I've done countless re-installs and aside the the one glitch I mentioned in this thread I have never had any problems accessing files on external drives or secondary partitions.
There was a user on here a couple weeks ago (see Computer shows external drive empty while its not.) with nearly the same problem, but shortcuts were not showing up. The drive looked blank. Turned out, somehow the +h and +s attributes were set to all files and folders. Running the command
dir /ashows all files with all attributes. If they show, then the command
attrib /s /d -h -s *will reveal all files again. Permissions can then be set if necessary.
Also, post #27 is where the OP made a mistake and why the system is no longer functioning. Taking ownership of the whole system drive causes massive problems in Windows. The command should have been conducted on the G: drive. The instructions in post #20 are correct, but there is a typo in the actual command where C replaces G.
Lyrical MC, were you able to resolve this? Perhaps by a system restore? Factory recovery?
Last edited by writhziden; 06 Feb 2012 at 14:51. Reason: Added thread link. OP help had typo...
That's a little too frigid alphanumeric. Unless of course, you're inside with no reason to go out. I would like a little cool whether for a change here in San Diego. We're mired in a 70's to 80's stretch for the past 3 weeks.
As I hinted, I regularly do a clean reinstall on my primary partition to keep it clean, and running its best, and I've never had this problem. So things like this literally cause me to lose sleep when I can't figure it out, and there's no apparent logical reason for it.
writhziden, thanks for the tip. I'll take a look when I get home. My laptop at the office doesn't have the same problem. I'm running XP on it.
writhziden, I read the link you provided above about the attributes changing. Hopefully, it'll be as simple as that. Do you recommend using the "attrib /s /d -h -s *" command from your post, or the one used in Post #20?
Use the one from my post. Then use the permissions from post 20, but use drive J: instead of C: to change the permissions.
cacls J:\ /t /g [username]:fwhere you will have to fill in your [username] (without the brackets)
For me, the commands would be:
J:
attrib /s /d -h -s *
cacls J:\ /t /g Mike:f
I ran dir /a on my flash drive, which had the same issues, and I ran the attributes command, but not the cacls command because the drive was formatted using FAT32 instead of NTFS (I don't remember why I did that). This time the directories showed up, as well as the shortcuts. I deleted the shortcuts and it looks normal. I'll still have to remove everything and reformat to NTFS so I can change permissions. Hopefully the same will work on the big drives, and I'll make a poster to hang over my desk with these commands.
Thanks for the help, and I'll let you know later on if this worked for the others.
You can convert FAT32 to NTFS without formatting or losing data. Convert FAT or FAT32 Volume to NTFS
Thanks, I knew of the one-way conversion, but the flash drive is only 16 GB, so I thought a reformat was in order anyway. I'm kinda curious if it'll come back with shortcuts, or the real deal.
If your external drives continue to come back with shortcuts, I would suspect malware at work here. Let us know if this is the case so we can help you make sure the system is secure.
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