How to get rid of "Lock" symbol in folder Icons?

[pstein]

Some of my folders in Windows Explorer contain in the lower left corner a "lock" symbol.
See attached snapshot

What does that mean?

How do I get rid of this sub-symbol?

Simply it can NOT mean "this folder is shared" since I have many other Folders which are shared as well but do NOT have such a sub-symbol

Peter

 

[Barman58]

If I recall correctly all it means is that the folders access permissions are different from it's parent in some way.

In most cases the changes are made by software applications rather than the User they may return if you manually "correct" the changes.

It does serve an important purpose in a multi user system especially on a Client / Server where multi user permissions are important.

For a single user system I would leave the application folders (system drive ), as they are as there could be Virtual Users as part of the application that are needed for reliable operation. Data folders I tend to set the access rights at the top of the folder tree and let them cascade down through the sub folders, regularly - this just makes things less likely to cause access issues when permissions go wrong

 

[Phredtx]

In Windows Explorer go to folder with the LOCK symbol. Then try going to Views / Group By and change the setting to where nothing is selected. It might be Sort By; do the same thing. It's been a while since I had this problem.