“Access Denied” troubles with files and folders in Windows

Good Evening,

Windows has this really nasty feature called “user permissions”, well its not all nasty as it gives full flexibility when it comes to assigning permissions to certain users or groups of users.

The trouble is that if your not familiar with the feature, and in fact just ignore it all together as is how Windows has been built, you may face frustrating problems when your PC dies and you transfer your hard drive to a new machine, or if you delete your user account and go to a new one, or even if you upgrade your Windows to a newer version!

So to all those who are locked out of with the irritating “Access Denied” when trying to access files and folders, I have a solution. This works for Windows 7 and Windows 8.

 

Windows 7 & Windows 8

If you are having problems editing, accessing, deleting or saving files, or problems accessing folders then you may need to take ownership of the files/folders. You can either perform this step on the problematic file/folder, or do what I do and go to “My Computer” and perform these steps by right-clicking the affected drive so that all files and folders have fixed permissions.

 

  1. Right-click the file/folder/drive that you wish to change ownership and click Properties.
  2. Click on the tab labelled Security then click the button labelled Advanced.
  3. A new window will appear, click on the Owner tab.
  4. Click on the Edit button and enter the administrator password if asked.
  5. Click on Other users or Groups and type Everyone in the text field.
  6. Now check Replace owner on subcontainers and objects.
  7. Click Ok.

That’s all! It may take a few hours to change all the permissions, but once done your drive will be accessible no matter what user or machine you plug your device into.

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Author: Dean WilliamsI'm a Web Developer, Graphics Designer and Gamer, this is my personal site which provides PHP programming advice, hints and tips

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