[SOLVED] Something has changed in Windows regarding permissions for my C drive.

[Darkmatterx]

At some point, which I'm afraid I don't know when it happened, I lost some of my access, or some programs lost some access to the C drive. I looked at my permissions and they haven't changed, but as I've never run into this before I never really took note of the general permissions for programs before now.

Some programs can still be installed to the C drive, such as in Program Files /x86, but some show those 2 folders greyed out.

I've also run into problems with programs not being able to save anything to the C drive, the Desktop, etc. even though I used to be able to.

I also can't seem to change a file in many places of the C drive through a Save or Save As function, suggesting this is a problem that mostly is effecting programs. However, if I copy the file to another drive, make the changes, and save on the non-system drive, I can then copy/paste or move the file back to the original folder on the C drive without issue.

As this change seems to mostly be effecting programs, and I don't know when it happened, I can't just restore to an earlier image of the C drive without likely breaking things.

BTW, I of course, did a reboot, then an SFC /Scannow, and then a DISM /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth and then a Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth and all 3 came back with no errors.

So, where do I go from here, that doesn't involve restoring to an image that will break things, or a clean install which would do the same thing? :/

Thanks,

DM

 

[Colif]

could try making a new user account and see if it happens on it as well.
create a local user & make it admin - https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...ndows-10-20de74e0-ac7f-3502-a866-32915af2a34d
while on normal user, go to C:/users
copy the contents of normal user folder onto the new user folder, this gives it access to all your files.
logon to new user and see if it has same problems

 

[Darkmatterx]

Thanks I'll try that later when I have a free moment. Something that has become rarer and rarer as I get older... ><

DM

 

[Darkmatterx]

OK. And this is what I meant by 'free time getting rare.' Last post, Dec 27, 2020. lol

I did the copy over a new user, and it did work, but, I also lost some things. One was file associations, although that one isn't a big deal. But it made me wonder if there were other things that would be missing? I did re-add the older Windows 7 sound themes to the registry on the old user, and in their proper file locations, but I remember it being something of a PITA at the time. I just can't remember if it was because of the steps involved, or just finding them all, and writing out the registry keys manually.

Oh, also, once all that is done, can I delete the old one and then change the name of the new one to be the same as the old name?

Thanks! (If old age hasn't taken you away from us, or something...)

DM

 

[Colif]

You only 4 months late, we have had people reply after years.

If you copied all the folders across, it should have exact same rights as other user so shouldn't have lost anything besides needing to logon to some things and set up desktop.

I would keep old user as a spare, as its always handy to have a working admin account, in case something weird happens again.
You could probably remove old one, but changing user names could lead to troubles. I would just stay as is or make a new user with a name you want once 1st one deleted

 

[Darkmatterx]

Years. lol

Maybe in another 10 years I'll be there.

The odd thing is, I used the 20H2 media creation tool to install the update and it seems to have fixed the problem. I used the media method because I've heard it can (rarely) fix these sorts of things. I'm not sure how since it doesn't touch your files. I'm wondering if it was actually a problem with Windows. I did run the usual suspects before hand; sfc, dism, and they found zip, but 202H shouldn't have fixed a profile problem.

...

Right?

 

[Colif]

If the profile problem was caused by windows, then yes. I don't know what causes some problems, I just try to find an answer to it. Sometimes you don't need to know how something happened, just how to fix it. I don't pretend to understand everything windows does

 

[Darkmatterx]

I don't pretend to understand everything windows does

I thought that was a given for everyone. Like, breathing.

 

[Colif]

Sorry, what, too busy remembering to breath again....