austinsandford

Please can someone help me, I am the only user of my lap top and I am therfore the administrator, but when i try to access cetain files like user settings I am being told I am not authorised to acces them,when i look in the security settings it shows me as an adminstrator how do i change these settings to allow me to acccess where i want, please tell me in simple words, as I must be thick as this area totally looses me.

Thankyou

Dark Atheist

where and what files are you trying to access ?

austinsandford

user settings is the main one plus dont like the fact of being unable to view files as adminstrator it should give fulll access

Dark Atheist

that tells me nothing, how are you trying to change user settings, control panel, group policy? what os you using - if its vista you have to take ownership of folder/file

austinsandford

sorry unable to explaibn myself any better cos i do not understand thanks for the help

Dark Atheist

first off what os are you using ?

fitz

carpo: given that this is posted in the Vista section, I'm guessing Vista But I agree, we should get clarification on what OS is being talked about here..

so austin, what OS are you running?

Assuming you are running under Vista, if you are trying to access files under the old "Documents and Settings" folders, you will not be able to since all that changed under Vista and user profile information and user files are all moved under the "users" folder.

The Documents and Settings folders are retained for compatibility purposes but are not "real" folders in the traditional sense and thus are inaccessible in Vista.

Dark Atheist

i just clicked on the link and it took me striaght to the post i didnt check above for where it was but i did say that you would have to take ownership if it was vista so i knew unconsiously (i know it aint spelt right i cant spell )

if you take ownership of the documents folder (i dont run vista so doing this from mem) it should take control of all folders files and links and it should be fine after that, all i did was right click on c:\users (or what ever it is) right click select take ownership - select your name

austinsandford

Yes the OS is vista home premium,when I go into Desktop\my name\local settings or print hood, both of these files have a blue arrow on them. When i try to open these two files I get the following message you don't currently have permission to access this file, click continue to get access to this folder, so i click this folder then i am told you have been denied permission to access this file to gain access to this folder you will need to use the security tab. when i do this i see that i have full access nd then get lost does this help ???

fitz

as I mentioned, it looks like you are trying to go into the depreciated documents and settings sections, which as I mentioned, are not really folders. As memory serves me correct, these folders are actually junction points and as such, should not be used in Vista.

j79zlr

Yea, this is quite possibly the most annoying thing that MS has done to date. I have worked with Ultimate and it doesn't have this problem. Someone just dropped off a laptop with Home Premium on it and I can't remove simple things like orphaned folders in the start menu since you can't access Documents and Settings. What a complete and utter piece of sheet. Taking ownership of the entire folder defeats the supposed security, and it didn't work anyway. Maybe if I had more than 2 minutes of patience for this steaming pile I would be in better shape.

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austinsandford

Sorry but what are depreciated documents, settings sections and junction points and as fitz states should not be used in Vista, so what are they and what do they do and whycant i find out about them ??? or isthis big brother again ??

j79zlr

They are there for backwards compatibility from what I've read. They link to the \Users\*username*\location but are different then just a normal symlink I guess.

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austinsandford

Thanks for that, its down to Dell not giving a full copy of Vista and having to upgrade from media i take it. Thanks again

fitz

?? no.. as mentioned, this is by design.. it's how Vista is designed.

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