File/Folder/Drive permissions in windows 7 64-bit

[Medoomi]

Hi,

I've recently upgraded to Windows 7, and am wading my way through file permissions issues.

Unfortunately, I also migrated my Lightroom HDD after installing Windows 7 (I didn't want anything going wrong during the installation). Now, I can't copy/delete/modify any file or folder on the drive without answering the dialogue that comes up whether to grant Administrative rights... And none of my catalogues open (Lightroom comes up with a file permissions dialogue). I can transfer the catalogues & files to other drives & they perform just fine, but I need to get the present drive operational without completely re-formatting it.

I've also done everything I can read on the internet about re-setting file permissions eg.
1) I've changed ownership of the drive/folders to "Users/PC", "Administrator/PC", "myname/PC" (setting this to apply to the sub-folders also).
2) I've added/edited user permissions for the drive/folder of "Users/PC," "Adminsitrator/PC," "myname/PC" to grant "full control."

I've also made sure that the lightroom catalogue is not locked.

I've also tried adding a "take ownership" context menu extension & applied that to the affected folders.

So far, nothing has worked. I gather it's a Win7 permissions issue, but I'm completely stuck & would be grateful if anyone could direct me how to fix the permissions. All I'd like is for the drive to behave like my other two drives without having to re-format...

Thanks

 

[Halfje-Bruin]

Welcome to the nightmare that is Windows. I had the same problem when I did a test upgrade to Vista and this was one of the main reasons I went back to XP. I had all my images on a second internal disk and couldn't make changes to many of the files. I tried several ways (just Google for permission reset) to reset the permissions but none worked. Within a few days I was back to XP.

The only solution I saw was a complete reformat of the disks and that wasn't worth the trouble for me.

 

[RikkFlohr]

Are you currently running the errant drive as a FAT32 or as NTFS? You may try converting it via the command prompt to the other type and see if that cures your issue.

FWIW, I have run five different versions of Windows (XP, Vista, 7, in 32 and 64 bit) with Lightroom on both internal and external drives and never seen this-or any permissions issue. Are you in a network environment with limited permissions due to corporate IT policy? If you disable UAC, what happens?

 

[Medoomi]

Thanks for the replies.

To at least get the drive going, I transferred the files on to other drives (double checking the integrity of the files) & deleted the partition, and re-formatted the whole thing.

Now, it's behaving like it should.

But I'm sure this issue will come up again. I have one other drive that migrated from winXP, so I'd love to know how to solve it without re-formatting.
To answer your questions:

It was formatted as NTFS. Converting it to FAT32 would mean losing data right (re-formatting solves the issue anyway, but I'd like to know just how to solve the permissions problem).

And no, the computer wasn't in a network environment. I don't even have the network up and running as I've yet to figure out file sharing with winXP. I didn't disable UAC, but will try next time.

If anyone else can chime in on what specifically could cause the initial problem & how to fix it, that'd be great (re-formatting drives is not much fun).