My old Win Xp Laptop broke so I'm using the hard drive as an external for my
new Vista Laptop, but whenever I try opening files from it I'm getting
trouble with permission.

I have tried changing permissions on the security tab of properties but not
having much luck, although I had a bit of luck with idividual files within
folders but cant for the life of me work out how to set it for whole folders
and subfolders, and now I'm going around in circles getting more frustrated
with this whole thing.

Anyone shed any light on a simple solution or have I got to go through
setting the security permission for every idividual file?

Regards

Woodzys wrote:

My old Win Xp Laptop broke so I'm using the hard drive as an external for
my new Vista Laptop, but whenever I try opening files from it I'm getting
trouble with permission.

I have tried changing permissions on the security tab of properties but
not having much luck, although I had a bit of luck with idividual files
within folders but cant for the life of me work out how to set it for
whole folders and subfolders, and now I'm going around in circles getting
more frustrated with this whole thing.

Anyone shed any light on a simple solution or have I got to go through
setting the security permission for every idividual file?

All my notes about taking ownership:

A. Check the permissions of the file or folder the file is saved in and take
ownership:

1. Right-click the file or folder, and then click Properties.
2. Click the Security tab.
3. Under Group or user names, click your name to see the permissions you
have.

To open a file, you need to have read permission. For more information on
permissions, see What are permissions?

http://tinyurl.com/2j9vgr

To take ownership of a folder:

1. Right-click the folder that you want to take ownership of, and then click
Properties.
2. Click the Security tab, click Advanced, and then click the Owner tab.
3. Click Edit. Administrator permission required If you are prompted for an
administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide
confirmation.
4. Click the name of the person you want to give ownership to.
5. If you want that person to be the owner of files and subfolders in this
folder, select the Replace owner on subcontainers and objects check box.
6. Click OK

B. Run this at an elevated Command Prompt:

cacls c:\ /t /e /g Administrators:f [enter]

This will give full rights to all the files and folders on drive C: to the
Administrators group, any member to this group will then have full rights
to the files.

To grant full rights to a specific user issue the command with the user's
name:

cacls c:\ /t /e /g Steve:f [enter]

will grant Steve full rights to all the files and folders on C:. If the
user name has spaces you must surround it with quotation marks:

cacls c:\ /t /e /g "Some User":f [enter]

C. Add Take Ownership to right-click menu in Vista -
http://www.petri.co.il/add-take-owne...menu-vista.htm

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
FAQ - http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ