Cannot access certain documents (XP Pro SP-2)

Topic

New Reply

Hi,

A few months ago, I needed to change my workgroup and/or domain. But the technician who was helping me didn’t know what she was doing, and ever since, I’ve had problems deleting certain folders in Favorites and opening certain files in My Documents.

A conversation with a technician from IBM said the problem has something to do with the fact that none of my folders have a Security tab (right-click the folder, then select Properties)

Logging in as Administrator produces the same error as logging in as me, Jonathan Rick (both accounts have administrative privileges, and I’m the only one who uses this computer).

For the folders, which are empty, in Favorites:
[indent]

---

Cannot delete [file or folder]: Access is denied.

Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use.

---

[/indent]

For the files, which are very important, in My Documents:
[indent]

---

Word cannot open the document: user does not have access privileges ([file path and name])

---

[/indent]
As shown in My Computer / Computer Name, my “full computer name” is “jrick.” and my workgroup is “WORKGROUP”

I’m also using NTFS.

The IBM technician pointed me to this Microsoft Knowledge Base article, but I’m lost…

I plan to reinstall Windows as soon as I fix this mess and can thus backup said files.

Thanks so much for your help!

Reply | Quote

Replies

This can happen if the files or folders are owned by a user that no longer exists on the system (even if you have the same Username, Windows stores the user identity separately to the name).

Administrator always has the right to “Take Ownership” of any file or folder on the system, but may not have any other access rights. You can find instructions for how to do this in post 526,340, or in this article.

StuartR

Reply | Quote

Hi Stuart,

Thanks for your prompt reply. Unfortunately, as I said in my first post, none of my folders have a Security tab.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again.

Reply | Quote

I just read the original question in post 526,340.

So, is your recommendation to backup all my files regardless of whether I can open or delete certain ones, and then, when I’m back up and running, to make the changes?

Reply | Quote

The reason that I posted the pointer to this article, as well as to post 526340 is because it covers all the cases where you don’t have a security tab.

You probably have simple file sharing enabled, and you would need to turn this off to get a security tab.

StuartR

Reply | Quote

Edited by HansV to make URLs clickable – see Help 19

Stuart,

Thanks for the follow-up.

First, I had to turn off simple fire sharing, as per http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307874%5B/url%5D

Then I could proceed w/ post 526340

Thanks a million!

Reply | Quote

I’ve got this problem for a PDF in a certain folder on our domain (Windows Server 2003 with NTFS). We’ve had files in the same folder loose all security permissions, but I was able to sort these out by taking ownership.

This time, since there’s no security tab, I can’t take ownership. I’ve tried forcing down ownership from the folder above, but it gives an error for the file in question. Simple file sharing is not turned on (it’s not even available).

Any more ideas from anyone?

Thanks,

Mark

Reply | Quote

Welcome to the Lounge!

From your post it is not clear, where PDF files in question are located: on your local drive or on the shared network drive (on the server).
If they are located on your local drive, the cause of your problem most likely is that your account has no Administrator rights.
If they are located on the network drive, you must to logon to the server as server administrator and then troubleshoot the problem.

Reply | Quote

Yes, I wasn’t very clear on that, was I? Sorry!

They are stored on a network drive. Everything I mentioned in my first post was tried whilst logged on to the server as an administrator.

One of my colleagues has just told me that we have had this problem before with PDFs, and that it was only resolved by rebooting the server. We’ll have to wait until no-one’s using it tonight to reboot. He suspects the file has been deleted (one of users was trying to overwrite the file with an updated version), but not completely.

The problem has only occurred in this particular folder. I can’t work out what the root cause is.

Regards,

Mark

Reply | Quote

It is very strange what you said.
You logon as Administrator to the computer which acting as file server and running Windows XP, and you don’t see “Use simple file sharing” under “Advanced settings” when you click View tab in Folder Options applet in the Control Panel. Is it correct?

If you have a problem on particular folder on shared drive, use checkdisk. From Command prompt, run
chkdsk e: /f
command, where E: is the drive on which shared folder is located.

Reply | Quote

Well, the problem’s been resolved for now by rebooting the server (which is running Windows Server 2003, not XP).

The server has a RAID array, so it’s unlikely that a disk error could cause a recurring problem in a particular folder. Therefore I doubt that running checkdisk would sort the problem out, except for the fact that it would force a reboot.

Thanks a lot for your help and suggestions with this very strange problem. I think we’ll just have to reboot if we get any further problems.

Regards,

Mark

Reply | Quote