Bit of a Win 7 security rant (coming from XP)
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Trying to copy a file (my exported firefox bookmarks) in Windows 7 from the My Documents folder of my XP installation to the desktop of my Win 7 installation (both are installed on separate hard disks and I dual boot by choosing which HD to boot in the BIOS at startup). Going mad here. Logged in as a member of Administrators. Shift, right click the explorer icon to run explorer as administrator, navigate into the old My Docs folder and have to give allow windows to give me permanent access to the folder to continue. This takes ages as instead of just adding administrators to the folder itself and relying on inheritence it seems to be updating the security attributes on every single file under there, so I cancelled after 5 minutes. Haven't checked yet but I'm hoping it's not messed up my XP account permissions on half of my files. Finally get down into the folder containing the file I'm trying to copy, get "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file." So I click "Continue" and then get another dialog saying "You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from the computer's administrator to make changes to this file.". Umm, I am the administrator and I'm not trying to make changes just copy the thing. Clicking "try again" displays the same message. So cancel out of that and go to the individual file's security settings and get told that I need to take ownership of the file first. Why is this necessary? So to copy this file from my Win XPs "My Documents" I now need to change the owner to an account that my XP installation won't recognize, risking being unable to access it in XP and possibly a repeat of the chkdsk incident which I had recently in which chkdsk decided the NTFS permissions on every file on my HD were invalid (probably because Win 7 changed them all when I first accessed the disk) and took about 3 or 4 hours to complete. Rant over, I've given up on this. I don't have a floppy drive but I'm off to hunt for a USB memory stick to see if I can copy a file from my hard disk to another part of my hard disk that way.
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Trying to copy a file (my exported firefox bookmarks) in Windows 7 from the My Documents folder of my XP installation to the desktop of my Win 7 installation (both are installed on separate hard disks and I dual boot by choosing which HD to boot in the BIOS at startup). Going mad here. Logged in as a member of Administrators. Shift, right click the explorer icon to run explorer as administrator, navigate into the old My Docs folder and have to give allow windows to give me permanent access to the folder to continue. This takes ages as instead of just adding administrators to the folder itself and relying on inheritence it seems to be updating the security attributes on every single file under there, so I cancelled after 5 minutes. Haven't checked yet but I'm hoping it's not messed up my XP account permissions on half of my files. Finally get down into the folder containing the file I'm trying to copy, get "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file." So I click "Continue" and then get another dialog saying "You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from the computer's administrator to make changes to this file.". Umm, I am the administrator and I'm not trying to make changes just copy the thing. Clicking "try again" displays the same message. So cancel out of that and go to the individual file's security settings and get told that I need to take ownership of the file first. Why is this necessary? So to copy this file from my Win XPs "My Documents" I now need to change the owner to an account that my XP installation won't recognize, risking being unable to access it in XP and possibly a repeat of the chkdsk incident which I had recently in which chkdsk decided the NTFS permissions on every file on my HD were invalid (probably because Win 7 changed them all when I first accessed the disk) and took about 3 or 4 hours to complete. Rant over, I've given up on this. I don't have a floppy drive but I'm off to hunt for a USB memory stick to see if I can copy a file from my hard disk to another part of my hard disk that way.
Right after I installed 7 I took over as many files and folders as I could (that took a while), it seems to help a little, but I still haven't figured out how to get the Fonts folder (and I really need it! I have to replace some terrible fonts that some programs which don't allow you to change the font use) edit: and I'm now semi-permanently on XP until nvidia gets their act together and releases a non-braindead driver that lets me use my monitors native resolution
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Right after I installed 7 I took over as many files and folders as I could (that took a while), it seems to help a little, but I still haven't figured out how to get the Fonts folder (and I really need it! I have to replace some terrible fonts that some programs which don't allow you to change the font use) edit: and I'm now semi-permanently on XP until nvidia gets their act together and releases a non-braindead driver that lets me use my monitors native resolution
harold aptroot wrote:
edit: and I'm now semi-permanently on XP until nvidia gets their act together and releases a non-braindead driver that lets me use my monitors native resolution
If the recent past is any indication, you may have to wait for satan's shower to turn into icicles prior to a migration to 7.
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harold aptroot wrote:
edit: and I'm now semi-permanently on XP until nvidia gets their act together and releases a non-braindead driver that lets me use my monitors native resolution
If the recent past is any indication, you may have to wait for satan's shower to turn into icicles prior to a migration to 7.
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Trying to copy a file (my exported firefox bookmarks) in Windows 7 from the My Documents folder of my XP installation to the desktop of my Win 7 installation (both are installed on separate hard disks and I dual boot by choosing which HD to boot in the BIOS at startup). Going mad here. Logged in as a member of Administrators. Shift, right click the explorer icon to run explorer as administrator, navigate into the old My Docs folder and have to give allow windows to give me permanent access to the folder to continue. This takes ages as instead of just adding administrators to the folder itself and relying on inheritence it seems to be updating the security attributes on every single file under there, so I cancelled after 5 minutes. Haven't checked yet but I'm hoping it's not messed up my XP account permissions on half of my files. Finally get down into the folder containing the file I'm trying to copy, get "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file." So I click "Continue" and then get another dialog saying "You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from the computer's administrator to make changes to this file.". Umm, I am the administrator and I'm not trying to make changes just copy the thing. Clicking "try again" displays the same message. So cancel out of that and go to the individual file's security settings and get told that I need to take ownership of the file first. Why is this necessary? So to copy this file from my Win XPs "My Documents" I now need to change the owner to an account that my XP installation won't recognize, risking being unable to access it in XP and possibly a repeat of the chkdsk incident which I had recently in which chkdsk decided the NTFS permissions on every file on my HD were invalid (probably because Win 7 changed them all when I first accessed the disk) and took about 3 or 4 hours to complete. Rant over, I've given up on this. I don't have a floppy drive but I'm off to hunt for a USB memory stick to see if I can copy a file from my hard disk to another part of my hard disk that way.
Windows 7. Just when you thought it was safe to turn UAC back on...
Christopher Duncan www.PracticalUSA.com Author of The Career Programmer and Unite the Tribes Copywriting Services
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Trying to copy a file (my exported firefox bookmarks) in Windows 7 from the My Documents folder of my XP installation to the desktop of my Win 7 installation (both are installed on separate hard disks and I dual boot by choosing which HD to boot in the BIOS at startup). Going mad here. Logged in as a member of Administrators. Shift, right click the explorer icon to run explorer as administrator, navigate into the old My Docs folder and have to give allow windows to give me permanent access to the folder to continue. This takes ages as instead of just adding administrators to the folder itself and relying on inheritence it seems to be updating the security attributes on every single file under there, so I cancelled after 5 minutes. Haven't checked yet but I'm hoping it's not messed up my XP account permissions on half of my files. Finally get down into the folder containing the file I'm trying to copy, get "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file." So I click "Continue" and then get another dialog saying "You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from the computer's administrator to make changes to this file.". Umm, I am the administrator and I'm not trying to make changes just copy the thing. Clicking "try again" displays the same message. So cancel out of that and go to the individual file's security settings and get told that I need to take ownership of the file first. Why is this necessary? So to copy this file from my Win XPs "My Documents" I now need to change the owner to an account that my XP installation won't recognize, risking being unable to access it in XP and possibly a repeat of the chkdsk incident which I had recently in which chkdsk decided the NTFS permissions on every file on my HD were invalid (probably because Win 7 changed them all when I first accessed the disk) and took about 3 or 4 hours to complete. Rant over, I've given up on this. I don't have a floppy drive but I'm off to hunt for a USB memory stick to see if I can copy a file from my hard disk to another part of my hard disk that way.
I had a similar problem when I first install Win 7. I couldn't copy files or write to certain drive (ie. encrypted volume/drive). So, I completely turn off the UAC and now I can copy or write to where ever I want and don't have to deal those annoying popups. I don't care for or need the UAC X| .
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Trying to copy a file (my exported firefox bookmarks) in Windows 7 from the My Documents folder of my XP installation to the desktop of my Win 7 installation (both are installed on separate hard disks and I dual boot by choosing which HD to boot in the BIOS at startup). Going mad here. Logged in as a member of Administrators. Shift, right click the explorer icon to run explorer as administrator, navigate into the old My Docs folder and have to give allow windows to give me permanent access to the folder to continue. This takes ages as instead of just adding administrators to the folder itself and relying on inheritence it seems to be updating the security attributes on every single file under there, so I cancelled after 5 minutes. Haven't checked yet but I'm hoping it's not messed up my XP account permissions on half of my files. Finally get down into the folder containing the file I'm trying to copy, get "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file." So I click "Continue" and then get another dialog saying "You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from the computer's administrator to make changes to this file.". Umm, I am the administrator and I'm not trying to make changes just copy the thing. Clicking "try again" displays the same message. So cancel out of that and go to the individual file's security settings and get told that I need to take ownership of the file first. Why is this necessary? So to copy this file from my Win XPs "My Documents" I now need to change the owner to an account that my XP installation won't recognize, risking being unable to access it in XP and possibly a repeat of the chkdsk incident which I had recently in which chkdsk decided the NTFS permissions on every file on my HD were invalid (probably because Win 7 changed them all when I first accessed the disk) and took about 3 or 4 hours to complete. Rant over, I've given up on this. I don't have a floppy drive but I'm off to hunt for a USB memory stick to see if I can copy a file from my hard disk to another part of my hard disk that way.
Is this specific to having things in the "My Documents" folder? I never put anything under there. It seems so absurd, given I'm the only one using the computer. And there's just something so narcissistic about MY documents. VB programmers must be narcissists. Me this, Me that, Me, Me, Me. Marc
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Trying to copy a file (my exported firefox bookmarks) in Windows 7 from the My Documents folder of my XP installation to the desktop of my Win 7 installation (both are installed on separate hard disks and I dual boot by choosing which HD to boot in the BIOS at startup). Going mad here. Logged in as a member of Administrators. Shift, right click the explorer icon to run explorer as administrator, navigate into the old My Docs folder and have to give allow windows to give me permanent access to the folder to continue. This takes ages as instead of just adding administrators to the folder itself and relying on inheritence it seems to be updating the security attributes on every single file under there, so I cancelled after 5 minutes. Haven't checked yet but I'm hoping it's not messed up my XP account permissions on half of my files. Finally get down into the folder containing the file I'm trying to copy, get "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file." So I click "Continue" and then get another dialog saying "You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from the computer's administrator to make changes to this file.". Umm, I am the administrator and I'm not trying to make changes just copy the thing. Clicking "try again" displays the same message. So cancel out of that and go to the individual file's security settings and get told that I need to take ownership of the file first. Why is this necessary? So to copy this file from my Win XPs "My Documents" I now need to change the owner to an account that my XP installation won't recognize, risking being unable to access it in XP and possibly a repeat of the chkdsk incident which I had recently in which chkdsk decided the NTFS permissions on every file on my HD were invalid (probably because Win 7 changed them all when I first accessed the disk) and took about 3 or 4 hours to complete. Rant over, I've given up on this. I don't have a floppy drive but I'm off to hunt for a USB memory stick to see if I can copy a file from my hard disk to another part of my hard disk that way.
FWIW, I used to run into this regularly when copying from an old XP installation to a new one: the problem is, NTFS says you don't have any permissions on the old filesystem (because you were a different user when that was created...), so you need that before you can read anything. Of course, you're administrator - you can just give yourself permission - but as you found, it's time-consuming. You can try adding yourself to the root & see if it propagates, but it won't necessarily propagate into user directories...
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Right after I installed 7 I took over as many files and folders as I could (that took a while), it seems to help a little, but I still haven't figured out how to get the Fonts folder (and I really need it! I have to replace some terrible fonts that some programs which don't allow you to change the font use) edit: and I'm now semi-permanently on XP until nvidia gets their act together and releases a non-braindead driver that lets me use my monitors native resolution
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harold aptroot wrote:
nvidia gets their act together
What card do you have? Weven kindly installed the proper drivers for nVidia for me (I certainly don't remember doing it and they're installed).
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GTX260 There are some drivers installed, and they work mostly (3D graphics work fine etc)
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Trying to copy a file (my exported firefox bookmarks) in Windows 7 from the My Documents folder of my XP installation to the desktop of my Win 7 installation (both are installed on separate hard disks and I dual boot by choosing which HD to boot in the BIOS at startup). Going mad here. Logged in as a member of Administrators. Shift, right click the explorer icon to run explorer as administrator, navigate into the old My Docs folder and have to give allow windows to give me permanent access to the folder to continue. This takes ages as instead of just adding administrators to the folder itself and relying on inheritence it seems to be updating the security attributes on every single file under there, so I cancelled after 5 minutes. Haven't checked yet but I'm hoping it's not messed up my XP account permissions on half of my files. Finally get down into the folder containing the file I'm trying to copy, get "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file." So I click "Continue" and then get another dialog saying "You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from the computer's administrator to make changes to this file.". Umm, I am the administrator and I'm not trying to make changes just copy the thing. Clicking "try again" displays the same message. So cancel out of that and go to the individual file's security settings and get told that I need to take ownership of the file first. Why is this necessary? So to copy this file from my Win XPs "My Documents" I now need to change the owner to an account that my XP installation won't recognize, risking being unable to access it in XP and possibly a repeat of the chkdsk incident which I had recently in which chkdsk decided the NTFS permissions on every file on my HD were invalid (probably because Win 7 changed them all when I first accessed the disk) and took about 3 or 4 hours to complete. Rant over, I've given up on this. I don't have a floppy drive but I'm off to hunt for a USB memory stick to see if I can copy a file from my hard disk to another part of my hard disk that way.
Dave Parker wrote:
This takes ages as instead of just adding administrators to the folder itself and relying on inheritence it seems to be updating the security attributes on every single file under there
It's the same on Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows 2008. It can be a pain, but it's a speed tradeoff with accessing the files. I haven't seen the excessive UAC on Windows 7 yet - but also I don't cancel out of "Applying security settings" dialogs :rolleyes:
Personally, I love the idea that Raymond spends his nights posting bad regexs to mailing lists under the pseudonym of Jane Smith. He'd be like a super hero, only more nerdy and less useful. [Trevel]
| FoldWithUs! | sighist | µLaunch - program launcher for server core and hyper-v server -
Maybe it's because it's a relatively new card (compared to mine, I remember having a few issues when I started using Vista). But since it's an 8800GTS it's a fairly ancient card now.
I'm on a GeForce 9800 GTX+ and worked straight away without needing drivers. I got better performance by downloading and installing drivers from nVidia though.
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Is this specific to having things in the "My Documents" folder? I never put anything under there. It seems so absurd, given I'm the only one using the computer. And there's just something so narcissistic about MY documents. VB programmers must be narcissists. Me this, Me that, Me, Me, Me. Marc
Maybe any location which disallows "Everyone" full control, not sure. I had to give permission just to access the root of my second hard disk, and then it did something funny with every file on there which then made XP throw a wobbly when I tried to boot into that.
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FWIW, I used to run into this regularly when copying from an old XP installation to a new one: the problem is, NTFS says you don't have any permissions on the old filesystem (because you were a different user when that was created...), so you need that before you can read anything. Of course, you're administrator - you can just give yourself permission - but as you found, it's time-consuming. You can try adding yourself to the root & see if it propagates, but it won't necessarily propagate into user directories...
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Trying to copy a file (my exported firefox bookmarks) in Windows 7 from the My Documents folder of my XP installation to the desktop of my Win 7 installation (both are installed on separate hard disks and I dual boot by choosing which HD to boot in the BIOS at startup). Going mad here. Logged in as a member of Administrators. Shift, right click the explorer icon to run explorer as administrator, navigate into the old My Docs folder and have to give allow windows to give me permanent access to the folder to continue. This takes ages as instead of just adding administrators to the folder itself and relying on inheritence it seems to be updating the security attributes on every single file under there, so I cancelled after 5 minutes. Haven't checked yet but I'm hoping it's not messed up my XP account permissions on half of my files. Finally get down into the folder containing the file I'm trying to copy, get "You'll need to provide administrator permission to copy this file." So I click "Continue" and then get another dialog saying "You need permission to perform this action. You require permission from the computer's administrator to make changes to this file.". Umm, I am the administrator and I'm not trying to make changes just copy the thing. Clicking "try again" displays the same message. So cancel out of that and go to the individual file's security settings and get told that I need to take ownership of the file first. Why is this necessary? So to copy this file from my Win XPs "My Documents" I now need to change the owner to an account that my XP installation won't recognize, risking being unable to access it in XP and possibly a repeat of the chkdsk incident which I had recently in which chkdsk decided the NTFS permissions on every file on my HD were invalid (probably because Win 7 changed them all when I first accessed the disk) and took about 3 or 4 hours to complete. Rant over, I've given up on this. I don't have a floppy drive but I'm off to hunt for a USB memory stick to see if I can copy a file from my hard disk to another part of my hard disk that way.