Windows permissions: Why won’t it let me do what I want?

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I recently purchased a new SSD to replace my C drive. Before doing the install, I took a bunch of backups, including copying the entire contents of the drive to my E: drive (normally used just for data). The install proceeded without a hitch; very satisfying!
Before I got round to cleaning up, my normal backup process copied this C drive information to my D drive (just backups normally).

Now I should point out that I am the only user on this PC, and the only one with physical access to it. My login is administrator-level – heck, as a long-time Unix system administrator, I reckon if I am stupid enough to hose my system, then I deserve all the fun I am going to have putting things right!

Today, I went to delete the spare copies of my C drive, only to be told that I do not have permission – I need permission from “trustedInstaller”, or something. I am the administrator – why can’t I delete my own files???

Just to add to the fun, I recently downloaded TrueImage 2013, and yesterday I tried out the “continuous backup” option. After just a few hours, the backup size was well over 100 GB. So, I stopped the process, and went to delete the un-needed backup files. Once again, I am told that I do not have permission to do this!

It seems that the only way I can restore this disk space is to copy everything else off and reformat the drives. To say that this is not a task I want to play with doesn’t even *begin* to describe my frustration!

This issue has come up before, but never in such an egregious way… Is there anyone out there who can tell me how to get permission to do stuff on my own PC? Before I am tempted to hurl the whole device through the window, preferably.

I throw this on the mercy of the experts! Thanks,

Phil.

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Even though your user is a member of the administrator group it is not the Administrator on the machine just as a user account is not ROOT on a UNIX machine.

You may need to take ownership of a folder or files to do what you wish. See Add “Take Ownership” to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista[/url] and Take Ownership of a File or Folder for instructions.

If you are running WIndows 8 see Take Ownership Of Files And Folders In Windows 8[/url]. If you do not want to add a context menu item see How to Take Full Ownership of Files & Folders in Windows 8.

Joe

--Joe

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Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! That works very nicely.

I don’t understand what you mean about not being root. If I am the only user in the system, and my login is marked as administrator-level, then the system should allow me to do anything I want, no matter how stupid it is! All unix users will have come across the same scenario, more or less: “rm */* – pause – AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH”

Other than your fix to grab ownership, how else could anything system-level be done? I have come across the same situation many times: “Ask your administrator for permission”. Who is this administrator and where does he live?

Anyway, did I say thank you?

Phil.

Even though your user is a member of the administrator group it is not the Administrator on the machine just as a user account is not ROOT on a UNIX machine.

You may need to take ownership of a folder or files to do what you wish. See Add “Take Ownership” to Explorer Right-Click Menu in Win 7 or Vista[/url] and Take Ownership of a File or Folder for instructions.

If you are running WIndows 8 see Take Ownership Of Files And Folders In Windows 8[/url]. If you do not want to add a context menu item see How to Take Full Ownership of Files & Folders in Windows 8.

Joe

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Thank you… I was going nuts trying to uninstall Flash Player and getting the Windows 8 TrustedInstaller denial.

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Sometimes, for file handling operations, you can remove some of those annoying messages by running Explorer as Administrator. Right click Explorer and choose Run As Administrator.

I understand your protest, especially with your Unix background. Problem is, until XP, pretty much everybody run their Windows systems as root, which posed quite serious security issues. The situation you have now is the result of trying to mitigate those risks. So, even when running an administrator account, you may not have permissions to perform file operations over certain files or folders. Taking Ownership is a good way to overcome any remaining difficulties.

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I have an interesting turn of events here… I am getting a dialogue saying that I need permission from Phil to delete these files. I am Phil…

Time for a reboot, see if that shuts it up!

Phil.

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Nope. Even after a reboot, it refuses to let me delete these files, without permission from me… I tried opening explorer as administrator, but that didn’t make any difference.

At least it is only a few files; I was able to delete the other 60GB of stuff…

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Did you take ownership of those files?

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yep. It even says that I need permission from me to delete them! Isn’t windows fun???

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Since the OP says he has Unix experience, he should download a “live” Linux ISO (a good choice is Puppy Linux – http://www.puppylinux.org/) burn it to disc, boot it up, and then delete the offending files.

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Downloading and installing Linux seems like a heck of a hassle, to delele my files off my PC…

At this stage, the unwanted files are small and not a problem. It’s the bigger picture I would like to know about… *Why* will it not let me delete files – as the administrator, or even having run the workaround to change the ownership. Given that I am the only userid on there, why on Earth would it tell me that I need permission from me?

I know a lot of people do business or multi-user stuff on their machines, but it *is* a Personal Compuer. For people like me, who are sole users and crave power over the electrons running around inside this box, this is not a terribly good state of affairs.

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I suppose I have never been completely stopped by windows restrictions. You may want to right click the problematic folders and check the security settings, assigning ownership, delete deny permissions, and similar, until you achieve what you want. I agree, though, it’s not fun.

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You could try using PendMoves v1.2 to delete the files at boot time.

Joe

--Joe

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Ok, I think we got it…

I went in an applied every sort of permission listed, to every entity on the system. It threw out a couple of horrified messages about inherited permissions or something, but eventually it did what I wanted.

Thanks again guys,

Phil.

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Thank you for this post. For years i have run into the situation described here. I always figured that I must have trashed my permissions without realizing it. (Often at night I would wake up at the keyboard and find something amiss.) Thank you for your persistence in getting to the bottom of this excruciatingly frustrating Windows issue. (Wish mainframes would make a comeback. Sigh.) Best wishes, Sam

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I have a Windows 7 system I built last fall for gaming, and some other light tasks. I got so frustrated trying to get anything done, I haven’t even turned the thing on since before Christmas.

Like the OP, I have always operated at Administrator level. No matter what I try to do on this Win7 machine, I constantly get messages telling I can’t access this, or I don’t have permission for that. I deeply resent Microsoft deciding for me what I can or can’t do on MY machine using software that I purchased. I don’t use the cloud, nobody else has access to my PC, and I have excellent internet security installed.

How do I make it allow me full access like I have on my XP Pro machine? I want to completely disable those stupid so-called “safeguards” Microsoft thinks I need. Right now, I’ve got a $500 brick sitting on my bench gathering dust.

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I have a Windows 7 system I built last fall for gaming, and some other light tasks. I got so frustrated trying to get anything done, I haven’t even turned the thing on since before Christmas.

Like the OP, I have always operated at Administrator level. No matter what I try to do on this Win7 machine, I constantly get messages telling I can’t access this, or I don’t have permission for that. I deeply resent Microsoft deciding for me what I can or can’t do on MY machine using software that I purchased. I don’t use the cloud, nobody else has access to my PC, and I have excellent internet security installed.

How do I make it allow me full access like I have on my XP Pro machine? I want to completely disable those stupid so-called “safeguards” Microsoft thinks I need. Right now, I’ve got a $500 brick sitting on my bench gathering dust.

See the links in post #2.

Joe

--Joe

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I turned off the UAC, or whatever it is they call it, about 3 days in. It wouldn’t let me do *anything* without a struggle… I have turned off everything I can think of, but still it won’t let me access my own files. This particular issue was just the final straw.

Microsoft needs to realise that not all PCs are used in busy office environments. It is a *personal* computer after all! Why can’t they put some kind of software switch which allows you to turn off *all* these restrictions? If I screw it up, that’s my problem. Even without doing anything silly and breaking it, the first thing tech support will do (assuming you can actually get to someone!) is tell you that it must be the fault of the other software on the system…

I would love to meet the guy who came up with the registry, in a dark alley one night! The idea that all your applications have to be installed after any kind of upgrade or reload of the OS… I used to shut down a major Unix box, load a new version of the OS (on about 100 floppies!), then as soon as I was done, everyone could get back to work. Besides, windows has *always* been known as a system which needs to be reloaded periodically anyway!

Grrrr…

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Besides, windows has *always* been known as a system which needs to be reloaded periodically anyway!

That may have been the case in pre-XP days. I still run XP systems with no apparent issues which have been running for years. I’ve never reloaded a Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 system just because it is Windows.

Joe

--Joe

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I have windows 7. Originally I had home premium, but I had to restore images several times. My PC had not come with a windows disk (how can that be legal?), so I was worried about a total loss. I bought and installed 7 ultimate. As I write this, the machine is dragging along, not doing much of anything. Right-click on a file, and it takes between 5 & 10 seconds before you get the menu up. I have a whole batch of files which keep encrypting themselves – I have *never* used encryption on my systems. I have gone the through the laborious task of setting them as not to encrypt several times. Couple of days later, off they go again.

I really don’t want to have to reinstall, because of the BS I was talking about earlier, having to reload every program on the system. It is beginning to look like I need to. I have run several ‘cleanup’ utilities, and let them fix the problems they found. I have run ReImage, which is supposed to ensure that all windows system files are correct. That was about 3 days ago, yet here I still am.

If I didn’t have a large investment in windows software, I would be telling microsoft where they can stick their lame duck!

That may have been the case in pre-XP days. I still run XP systems with no apparent issues which have been running for years. I’ve never reloaded a Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 system just because it is Windows.

Joe

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Microsoft needs to realise that not all PCs are used in busy office environments. It is a *personal* computer after all! Why can’t they put some kind of software switch which allows you to turn off *all* these restrictions? If I screw it up, that’s my problem.

How about big switch graphic on a options screen … Windows Smart (for us) – Windows Stupid (for the unwashed masses). I’d pay extra for that kind of functionality! Like you, I want GOD-level access to all of the files on my computer…I’m the human, Darn it! 😡

I would love to meet the guy who came up with the registry, in a dark alley one night!

Him along with Steve B. and the “Let’s get rid of all the menu(s)” guy – need to be tarred and feathered and run out of Redmond!

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Wow, am I glad I ran across this thread! I’ve put some old drives in extra bays on my aging Win 7 computer, and the cheap extra storage is nice, but Secunia kept complaining about the left-over executables on the extra drives. So I finally got around to deleting the windows and winnt directories and it mostly went smoothly. Had to use my admin account (which I DON’T normally run under) for some. Last thing remaining was 3 copies of Flash .exe and .ocx which would not yield to anything. Took ownership as admin and got the same result as Phil (“you need permission from Phil”).

Finally ran across the tip to activate “Administrator” and thought “woot, now I’m Root!” Except, not quite. Administator needs permission from “administrators”. HUH??? (Curse you yet again, Adobe!!!)

What I WAS able to do was go 4 levels into Properties|Security and give Everyone Full Access to the files, “OK” back out and delete them. Very tedious, no doubt there’s a better way but oh well.

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Tried that. Didn’t work. It says that it is ready to delete the 2 files on reboot, but nothing happens. If it is providing any error output, there is no way for me to see it.

This whole situation is becoming farcical! All I want to do is remove 2 files from my own PC. The files are owned by me. but the system still won’t let me do this… I am getting very frustrated here! We should not have to jump through these hoops…

Thanks for the suggestions guys. If I ever find a way, I will post it back here. I really don’t want to do a format – just copying the data back and forth will take a bunch of hours.

Phil.

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Can you let us know which files are in question and where they are located?

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Can you let us know which files are in question and where they are located?

Yes, they were under windowsSystem32 (and SysWOW64)MacromediaFlashFlash[some numbers].ocx
Interestingly, they seemed to be in the wrong folders – the one with 64 in it’s name was in the System32 directory tree, and the one with 32 was under SysWOW64.

I still don’t think we should have to spend this many hours to delete 2 simple files.

Did I ever mention that I hate windows???

Phil.

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Interestingly, they seemed to be in the wrong folders – the one with 64 in it’s name was in the System32 directory tree, and the one with 32 was under SysWOW64.

You are in the wrong – not the files.

64 bit Windows has both System32 and SysWOW64 folders.
64 bit applications use 64 bit code held in System32
32 bit applications use 32 bit code held in SysWOW64 – BUT they do not realise that Windows is lying to them,
they think they are using System32 because that is what they were programmed to do.

I suggest that you download and unzip to different folders both the 32 bit and 64 bit PORTABLE versions of QDIR.
http://www.softwareok.com/?Download=Q-Dir

The 64 bit version will show you both System32 and SysWOW64 folders.

The 32 bit version is a 32 bit application which will only show you System32
BUT
if you study the the sizes of System32 files as seen by 32 bit QDIR
you will observe that they are exactly the same as 64 bit QDIR shows within SysWOW64.

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That doesn’t sound right to me… If a 32-bit application was programmed to look in System32, wouldn’t it make sense to leave the 32-bit code in there. That way, they don’t need to know anything about the 64-bit stuff. I know the people who design windows have some strange ideas (the registry????) but it seems particularly silly to put 32-bit files in a folder with 64 in its name, and 64-bit files in a folder with 32 in its name. Maybe it’s just me, but…

Phil.

You are in the wrong – not the files.

64 bit Windows has both System32 and SysWOW64 folders.
64 bit applications use 64 bit code held in System32
32 bit applications use 32 bit code held in SysWOW64 – BUT they do not realise that Windows is lying to them,
they think they are using System32 because that is what they were programmed to do.

I suggest that you download and unzip to different folders both the 32 bit and 64 bit PORTABLE versions of QDIR.
http://www.softwareok.com/?Download=Q-Dir

The 64 bit version will show you both System32 and SysWOW64 folders.

The 32 bit version is a 32 bit application which will only show you System32
BUT
if you study the the sizes of System32 files as seen by 32 bit QDIR
you will observe that they are exactly the same as 64 bit QDIR shows within SysWOW64.

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That’s weird, I can delete those with a simple right click and choosing Delete from the popup menu. Are you sure they aren’t being used when you try to delete them?

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That’s weird, I can delete those with a simple right click and choosing Delete from the popup menu. Are you sure they aren’t being used when you try to delete them?

Nope. At one point, early on in the game, it *did* say that they were in use, but I had closed down everything which I could think of – explorer, email, can’t remember what else. The last 20 or 30 efforts have been with hardly anything running at all. Plus, I still don’t know why the movefile thing failed…

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Did you use TakeOwnership on both Flash folders?

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Yeah, I did it for the whole directory tree, which I could then mostly delete. Those were the only files which failed, and I tried the ownership thing several times. Looking at the properties for the, the only ‘entity’ with permissions to do *anything* was trustedinstaller. Owner, administrator, there were no other permissions given. I still can’t get my head around being told to get permission from myself!

I should point out that the second copy (created by my internal backup) deleted fine after taking ownership. Those files didn’t give any problem there.

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Try assigning permissions to yourself.

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(Often at night I would wake up at the keyboard and find something amiss.)

This would seem to be the ideal example of a PEBCAK.

Zig

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Might it be possible to install Win XP (say on a thumb drive) and use that to delete the stubborn files. Or maybe even DOS. :rolleyes:

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You could try a non destructive repair install. Nothing will be lost and it is usually successful. My Windows 7 desktop run into several issues and a repair install fixed them all.

Of course, I am admiting you have run av scans, etc.

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Yes, I have run av scans. One of the problems I have is that the anti-malware service executable is running constantly, and using up around 20% of my processor.

I have been looking at the link you sent, and it may help. One potential problem is that I just installed an SSD for my C drive. To make sure I could fit the partition on it, I moved a lot of my program files, user account stuff, to a different drive. The instructions say to restore all that to the default before running the repair, but I don’t have enough room on C to do this.

Thanks for the input, though. At least there is a chance I can get it to work.

Phil.

You could try a non destructive repair install. Nothing will be lost and it is usually successful. My Windows 7 desktop run into several issues and a repair install fixed them all.

Of course, I am admiting you have run av scans, etc.

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That situation with the malware service is bad. Maybe try uninstalling it and then install it again. Not sure what free apps are best, as I use a paid anti-malware app.

Sorry about the C: drive, one of the major caveats of moving files from the usual places is the inability to upgrade (or reinstall Windows). Doesn’t really make much sense, but that’s how things are.

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I am a Computer Consultant (since 2003). After Microsoft released Vista I wrestled with UAC for a while but after a time realized that it is actually a very effective security feature.
Every now and then I come accross a Vista/Win7/Win8 PC with (usually serious) problems that has been running for some time with UAC turned off. In almost all cases the problems were so severe reinstalling Windows was the only sensible option; in some cases a repair-reinstall might work.
Rarely it might be necessary to temporarily turn off UAC for some reason, however I cannot remember the last time I needed to do so.
Windows’ “permissions” system might seem confusing and illogical to someone used to other OS, but it does work, and I very seldom need to alter the default settings (apart from for networking purposes).
As for deleting files which refuse to be deleted, you could open a command prompt (“Run as administrator”) and run the “DEL” (for individual files) or “REMDIR” (for folders) commands.
Back in the days of Win95 I became very disillusioned with Windows, so switched to Red Hat Linux for a time, then Mandrake for a few months. But I returned to Windows after 98SE was released because I had decided to study for my University degree.
It is hard to see the logic in knocking Windows just because you are having (most likely) self-inflicted problems. If Windows is really so bad then just why is it that such a large percentage of the world uses it?

Edit: whoops! “RMDIR” not “REMDIR” – in the command prompt type “RMDIR /?” for a list of available switches.

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I might suggest that you read the earlier posts on the thread before posting… I tried deleting from a command prompt; it didn’t work. I tried it as administrator; it didn’t work. I took ownership of the files, and tried it again; it still didn’t work.

Just because a lot of people are stuck with windows, it doesn’t mean it is any good. To most people, they have no idea that there is anything else out there. They get a computer to do emails, or surf for porn, or whatever. The windows interface is just the way that the computer talks to them. Ask them about trying another OS, and you just get blank looks.

I would love to know how I could have caused this problem. I do run as administrator, and if I am stupid enough to delete something important, that’s my hard luck. I don’t go digging around in the registry, or changing things just for the sake of it. I took a copy of my windows partition before putting in an SSD to replace it, as I wasn’t totally trusting the cloning app which came with the SSD. The upgrade worked, I went back to delete the extra stuff, windows decided I couldn’t be trusted to do that. How do you think I could do that? Currently, I have the “antimalware service executable” running constantly, and eating up between 15 and 30 percent of my processor cycles. Any guesses as to how I could have done that?
I may be clever, but I am not *that* clever! It won’t allow me to kill the process – despite being administrator, which is where we came in…

I would change to some flavour of linux tomorrow, if I didn’t have a large investment in windows software. You are entitled to love windows if you wish; everyone is entitled to their opinion. It’s a free country, or so they say.

Phil.

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I have successfully used GrantAdminFullControl to Take Ownership of files refusing to be deleted. GrantAdminFullControl seems to be Take Ownership on steroids.

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Thanks, I’ll give it a try.

Phil.

I have successfully used GrantAdminFullControl to Take Ownership of files refusing to be deleted. GrantAdminFullControl seems to be Take Ownership on steroids.

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From your description in posts #1,#3, & #5 I take that to mean you installed the SSD & reinstalled Windows. When you re-installed the OS your user was assigned a different internal id than it had before. Even though it looks the same because the external name is the same it is not the same user. So, the owner of the files that had been copied or created on the other drives was a different user to Windows.

Starting with Vista and continuing forward a user who is a member of the administrative group may do more things on the PC than a standard user but is not given complete unfettered access to the PC as it was in XP . This was done to prevent users from trashing their PCs accidentally. UAC forces the user to respond that they realize what is going on. Users still must abide by NTFS permissions.

You can always activate the “Administrator” account and login as “Administrator” if you want a higher default clearance level.

Joe

--Joe

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No, I didn’t have to reinstall windows after installing the SSD. I cloned my C drive to the SSD, then physically installed it, and that was it. The software which came with the drive took care of switching drive letters, making sure that the pc would boot from the SSD, and that was it. I didn’t change anything to do with user names or accounts.

I already *am* the administrator. There is no other login – I tell a lie, there is “desktopservicesuser”. There is no administrator account.

Here is what I get when I say I want to change my login type:33427-Image-078

From your description in posts #1,#3, & #5 I take that to mean you installed the SSD & reinstalled Windows. When you re-installed the OS your user was assigned a different internal id than it had before. Even though it looks the same because the external name is the same it is not the same user. So, the owner of the files that had been copied or created on the other drives was a different user to Windows.

Starting with Vista and continuing forward a user who is a member of the administrative group may do more things on the PC than a standard user but is not given complete unfettered access to the PC as it was in XP . This was done to prevent users from trashing their PCs accidentally. UAC forces the user to respond that they realize what is going on. Users still must abide by NTFS permissions.

You can always activate the “Administrator” account and login as “Administrator” if you want a higher default clearance level.

Joe

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No, I didn’t have to reinstall windows after installing the SSD. I cloned my C drive to the SSD, then physically installed it, and that was it. The software which came with the drive took care of switching drive letters, making sure that the pc would boot from the SSD, and that was it. I didn’t change anything to do with user names or accounts.

SSDs work quite differently to conventional HDDs, and the OS needs to be SSD-aware because of those differences. You might find this Wikipedia article helpful (the section on filesystems about 2/3 down).

Could your problems have something to do with your having cloned from a conventional HDD to your SSD? Maybe doing so has upset the NTFS filesystem somehow?

You might want to consider backing up your SSD’s contents and doing a test install of Win7 on it (might take a couple of hours, but should give you some idea whether or not there is some deep-seated filesystem problem in your existing installation).

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SSDs work quite differently to conventional HDDs, and the OS needs to be SSD-aware because of those differences. You might find this Wikipedia article helpful (the section on filesystems about 2/3 down).

Could your problems have something to do with your having cloned from a conventional HDD to your SSD? Maybe doing so has upset the NTFS filesystem somehow?

You might want to consider backing up your SSD’s contents and doing a test install of Win7 on it (might take a couple of hours, but should give you some idea whether or not there is some deep-seated filesystem problem in your existing installation).

SSDs work fine on Windows 7 and cloning results should be totally transparent to the OS, in terms of file system access. I cloned my laptop disk to replace it by an SSD and it was trouble free (although the OS is Windows 8).

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There *is* no administrator account. Just me. I will attach a screen capture of what I get if I say I want to change account types. According to this, adminstrator-level accounts have full access to everything, and can make any changes. If I tell windows I want to change user ids, the only option which comes up, is me.
33427-Image-07833427-Image-078

Also, I didn’t reinstall windows after getting the SSD. I used the software which came with it to clone the C drive, and assign drive letters to make sure that the SSD was the boot drive. I didn’t make any changes to user accounts.

I don’t like microsoft ‘nannying’ me, telling me that I am not allowed to change *my* settings on *my* PC. By all means, let them have their UAC stuff, to prevent the masses from destroying themselves, but there should be a way to totally bypass all of this for those users who wish to do so.

(this message may appear twice, or at least the contents. I tried to check that the file had uploaded, and when I came back to this page, the reply had vanished.)

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I know this seems like a broken record but you are not the “administrator”. Your account is an administrator type account, a member of the admin group. Note the last sentence in the comment about an adminstrator type account.

See Enable the (Hidden) Administrator Account on Windows 7 or Vista[/url].

I understand the frustration of long time Windows users. I had them myself at first. Now, I seldom see a UAC prompt. You are able to change the settings on your PC. It is just more complicated than it used to be.

Not sure how it happened but what you describe is the product of your account’s internal id being changed.

Joe

--Joe

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I just tried this. There *is* a password, and since I didn’t know anything about this, I certainly didn’t create a password on it… Ok, I managed to reset the password and I was able to change user to administrator. I called up task manager, and tried to stop the MsMpEng process. Guess what?
“action failed – permission is denied”.

If all this is a result of my internal id being changed, is there anything I can do to change it back? Or fix this some other way?

The malware beastie is running at about 20% of cpu time. Most things work reasonably well, but windows explorer is almost unusable. There is a delay of about 10 seconds (really!) between clicking on an icon and anything happening. I have a copy of Avira anti-virus on here, which I use for XP mode. I can always install that, but that doesn’t solve the problem of why MSE is going berserk. There are a ton of messages about the same problem in google, going back to 2009 that I saw. None of the answers help much, though. MSE had great reports from the people here on Windows Secrets, and I have used it since I had Vista.

I have spent most of my PC time for the past 3 or 4 days just working on getting this sorted, instead of doing the work that I want to be getting on with… I am getting very frustrated!

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I just tried this. There *is* a password, and since I didn’t know anything about this, I certainly didn’t create a password on it… Ok, I managed to reset the password and I was able to change user to administrator. I called up task manager, and tried to stop the MsMpEng process. Guess what?
“action failed – permission is denied”.

This is understandable. MsMpEng is the MSE process and if it could be killed that simply, it would be useless as an antimalware.

MSE is a high resource, average effectiveness AV solution, but that doesn’t justify the behavior in this case…

Anyway, seems you sorted it, so that is a good thing.

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Going to reply to my own message here…

I think I have it. I just spent some time digging around with ProcessMonitor, and discovered that the malware program is *constantly* accessing a log file belonging to Acronis. It is produced by the sync agent process under True Image 2013. I killed the agent, and my machine is back to normal. Of course, I don’t know if that process will affect my backup processes, but I’ll just have to wait and see. It will be a shame if I can’t use True Image, because they finally have a version which actually works. It does it’s image backups in the background, with none of this ‘boot to CD first’ rubbish. You do have to boot to a rescue disk to restore a backup, but it has actually worked twice for me.

I am running their trial version, so at least if it doesn’t work without that process, I haven’t lost my money on the deal.

Guys, I want to thank you all for your suggestions. If I was getting a bit ratty, well, I’m sorry. I just invested my tax rebate in upgrades to the PC, and it seemed to be going backwards for the past few days.

Ok, on to the next problem!

Phil.

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Spoke too soon… 🙁 I right-clicked on my dvd drive this afternoon, and then went back to work. That was at 1:30. It is now 5:25, and the context menu has not opened yet. That must be something of a record!

I started indexing off again, in case it was the lack of an index which was holding it up. That has also been running for 4 hours or so. Currently it says 144,809 items indexed, and that speed is reduced due to user activity… How could it possibly go any slower???

Phil.

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Spoke too soon… 🙁 I right-clicked on my dvd drive this afternoon, and then went back to work. That was at 1:30. It is now 5:25, and the context menu has not opened yet. That must be something of a record!

I started indexing off again, in case it was the lack of an index which was holding it up. That has also been running for 4 hours or so. Currently it says 144,809 items indexed, and that speed is reduced due to user activity… How could it possibly go any slower???

Phil.

Search indexer is probably the worst enemy of performance in a Windows system. I just stop it all the time.

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Spoke too soon… 🙁 I right-clicked on my dvd drive this afternoon, and then went back to work. That was at 1:30. It is now 5:25, and the context menu has not opened yet. That must be something of a record!

I started indexing off again, in case it was the lack of an index which was holding it up. That has also been running for 4 hours or so. Currently it says 144,809 items indexed, and that speed is reduced due to user activity… How could it possibly go any slower???

Phil.

Have you run an FS repair scan? If not, you probably should before going further.

Open a command prompt (Start/Programs/Accessories/Command Prompt, right-click, click “Run as administrator”).
Type “chkdsk c: /r” (w/o quotes) then press Enter (change “c:” to suit if your Windows partition is using some other drive letter [which is another potential cause of problems]).
This will check for NTFS errors and attempt to repair any errors found – usually takes 30min to 1hr or so).

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MS Antimalware Service = Windows Defender. Enabled in Win 8 by default, and similar to MSE on Win 7. Both can be turned off, and should be turned off (uninstalled in the case of MSE) before installing any other active AV or AS product. This will shut down the background activity of the Antimalware Service.

You should have active antimalware in Windows 7, but if MSE is not working out, maybe another AV program might work with less resource hogging? I don’t recommend Avast Free, as it has components which are just as taxing as MSE, if not worse. Same thing for Norton and McAfee paid AV suites.

Flash Player in Win 8 (but not in Win 7) in IE 10 is not Adobe Flash Player. There are Registry values which are locked in Win 8 in regards to Flash Player, and these are in my experience impervious to any Permissions or Ownership changes. You simply cannot delete Flash Player or change it in Win 8/IE 10. While this does not specifically apply to Windows 7, the SysWoW instance of the Flash files might be affected by some similar sort of locking. I have particular trouble getting rid of the old Flash Player Active X files, whether from original locations, or from copies elsewhere.

Generally, enabling the Super Administrator Account (Hidden Administrator) will remove any effect of Windows 7 UACs on permissions. But this willl not remove restrictions based on Ownership. Even Windows Super Administrators do not have permission to override or shut down some running Services. The Services must be Stopped before being disabled. This is done with the Administrator Tools (for Services).

I have had a LOT of issues with Acronis True Image Home since ATIH 2011. Most of these issues revolve around Acronis Sync Services.(This is used to enable File Sharing and Cloud Backup, among other uses.) It tries to be always on and starts with Windows, yet is not a Windows Startup Item which can be disabled through MS Config.

Preferring a backup program which only does backup andrecovery to my local external HDDs, I have switched to Macrium Reflect (either paid or free). It doesn’t keep running its processes when not in use for backup and recovery. But it also doesn’t continuously sync files between the main drive and any backup locations, so there would be a need for another program to do that, as far as I know. Generally, I have had few problems getting Reflect to work, both creating and restoring from backup archives to external conventional HDDs.

The Acronis Installer has on rare occasions refused to complete, resulting in neither being installed nor uninstalled. I rebuilt that Windows installation to get rid of Acronis and its problems. No such issues on any other machine.

No, Windows is not Unix, and this is very frustrating for some folks. If Desktop Linux had more compatible programs and better support communities, I too might drop Windows for Linux. But in the Real World, the hassles of finding support or software which matches MS Office formats for instance, just isn’t worth making the switch. For a Unix user, this might be a lot less of a consideration.

So I deal with Windows, in spite of its limitations, and I think that’s what the rest of the 92% of PC users who run Windows are doing every day. It is a pain and a bother sometimes, but this is the most used and most supported OS in the world today, and in the foreseeable future.

-- rc primak

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You simply cannot delete Flash Player or change it in Win 8/IE 10.

You can disable it: How to Lock Down IE 10 by Disabling Flash in Windows 8

Bruce

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I bought True Image a year or two ago, having just bought a 4TB external drive. The program would not backup to that drive. Tech support blamed the fact that it was over 2TB in size – not uncommon these days. I partitioned the drive, but it made no difference at all. The experience left a nasty taste in my mouth. I hadn’t used it since.

Then they sent me an email about the 2013 version of the program, so I downloaded it, and am in the middle of my 30-day evaluation. It is *much* improved from the earlier one. No problem with the external drive, or running a backup while the PC is in use – something else the older one would not do.

You have to boot from their rescue disk in order to restore the windows partition, but it does work. I have restored twice in the past couple of weeks, and there were no problems either time.

One quirk it has now, is that it is not possible to create a full backup of a drive and keep it separate. I have it running automatically every night, but the size of the file is growing exponentially. My C drive backup is only about 60GB, but the current size of the backup file is close to 400GB. Because of space limitations, I want to delete the oldest ones every few days. That causes problems with restoring, because the program is looking for a ‘set’ of backups.
If you set it for what they call ‘single version’ backup, it will create an independent file, but then overwrite it each time…

Not having registered the program yet, I cannot get to tech support. I posted a message on their user forums about a week ago, asking how to get around this, but nobody has bothered to reply.

I agree with you completely about windows… When it works, it is ok, but the innards are so complex now that nobody can figure out what is going wrong. I get sick of hearing tech support people blame whatever my problem is, on someone else’s software. I do not understand what the problem was with the old way of doing things – each application having its own .ini file. (senior moment – was *that* what they were called?).

It’s like the old quote about democracy (I think by Churchill), that it is the worst way of doing things, except for all the others!

I have had a LOT of issues with Acronis True Image Home since ATIH 2011. Most of these issues revolve around Acronis Sync Services.(This is used to enable File Sharing and Cloud Backup, among other uses.) It tries to be always on and starts with Windows, yet is not a Windows Startup Item which can be disabled through MS Config.

Preferring a backup program which only does backup andrecovery to my local external HDDs, I have switched to Macrium Reflect (either paid or free). It doesn’t keep running its processes when not in use for backup and recovery. But it also doesn’t continuously sync files between the main drive and any backup locations, so there would be a need for another program to do that, as far as I know. Generally, I have had few problems getting Reflect to work, both creating and restoring from backup archives to external conventional HDDs.

So I deal with Windows, in spite of its limitations, and I think that’s what the rest of the 92% of PC users who run Windows are doing every day. It is a pain and a bother sometimes, but this is the most used and most supported OS in the world today, and in the foreseeable future.

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@ bobprimak
‘I have had few problems getting Reflect to work, both creating and restoring from backup archives to external conventional HDDs.’

Have I misunderstood, or are you saying that Reflect can only restore to another external HDD? If so, how do you restore to the PC?

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You could try this to activate administrator account for all machine.

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Yep, did that last week.

About the other message, re. cloning from HDD to SSD. I don’t see why NTFS should care, really. I copied the data from one disk to another (at least, to what appeared to be another, to windows), then changed the drive letters accordingly. I really don’t see why that should cause a problem. I don’t see any other way to add an SSD to a PC, otherwise.

I am running ReImage at the moment. That has saved me from some screwed up action before. If that doesn’t help, then I need to reinstall windows (eek!). I was going to do a non-desctructive install, to preserve my data, etc., but because I have no idea *what* is causing this problem, I may just bite the bullet and reinstall from scratch. That way, I can be certain that none of the software settings has caused a problem.

Not how I planned to spend my weekend, but…

Thanks for the suggestions!

You could try this to activate administrator account for all machine.

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