All drives stuck on read only.

nick7712

Reputable
Mar 6, 2015
14
0
4,510
I have been having this problem for many years. I'm not sure what causes it but it keeps reoccuring on different systems, build etc. It started again a few days ago. Every single file and folder on all 3 of my drives is set to read only and I can't change it. New games I install won't launch, torrents won't seed because they don't have permission and applications I already have installed crash.The work around I've used over the years is simply adding "take ownership" to the registry allowing me to forcibly remove the read online settings. However, I'd like to actually figure out the root of the problem and solve it.
 
Solution
All win 10 folders are always read only, but that normally doesn't stop anything as you have full permissions to change contents of them. The files shouldn't be read only though, it would appear your user is corrupted or is lacking permissions it should have. On these different systems, are you using same login? Is it linked to an email address? Could be the roaming profile on MS servers is corrupt (really love to know how to clear that) and once you login it syncs the wrong settings

Have you tried setting up a homegroup as when i first upgraded to win 10, Onedrive had more access to my folders than I did, and setting up a home group fixed it.

See if setting up a new local user makes any difference. Try making it admin, copy the...

Colif

Win 11 Master
Moderator
All win 10 folders are always read only, but that normally doesn't stop anything as you have full permissions to change contents of them. The files shouldn't be read only though, it would appear your user is corrupted or is lacking permissions it should have. On these different systems, are you using same login? Is it linked to an email address? Could be the roaming profile on MS servers is corrupt (really love to know how to clear that) and once you login it syncs the wrong settings

Have you tried setting up a homegroup as when i first upgraded to win 10, Onedrive had more access to my folders than I did, and setting up a home group fixed it.

See if setting up a new local user makes any difference. Try making it admin, copy the contents of old users c:\users/username folder onto new user, and see if it makes any difference. Then normally all you need to do is set up browsers & log into steam and maybe a few other things. only takes 10 minutes.
 
Solution