Dear all, I tried to set up user permissions to share a partition with my main user account (administrative rights, use only for system operations) and with a limited account (primarily use for access to Internet and work). My intention was to allow Full Control to both on my Data-partition. Initially the setup was ok, just that any files created by my Computer Administrator account could not be shifted (when tidying up my folders) by my limited account.
Now I am left with Full Control of my Computer Administrator account, when I am logged in there. I have added the limited account to the User names section in the Security tab for the partition, and given Full Control. In Advanced it tells me: "Apply to: This folder, subfolders and files", which is the same as for the Computer Administrator account, and should be ok.
However, logged in on the limited account, I can view the subfolders of the partition but for their content I get an "Access denied" message. Whatever I did wrong with playing with the "Replace Permission on all child objects..." I now just want to get back to the original setting, which was cumbersome, but worked.
I thought of two options:
1) Change the limited account to a Computer Administrator account, and after a restart back to a limited account.
2) Create another limited account and shift or access the data, then delete the old limited account.
Whilst the latter might be the "easier" option, could someone explain, whether the first option would work, or wether the second option might not work.
Thanks very much in anticipation.
ainstein
Archiv Windows XP 25.916 Themen, 128.567 Beiträge
Hi ainstein,
Your problem is most likely due to the fact that the File system of your data partition is NTFS, which in fact saves "owner information" with the files stored in it.
That means if you create a file with your admin account, the filesystem stores the information that the file is owned by this account, further disallowing unpriviledged users(such as your limited account) to access them. So what you can do is to either "reset" the owner after creating a file, allowing limited accounts to access them, or reformat the partition with the FAT32 file system which does not save owner information for files/folders. Note however that there are some limits, for instance, FAT32 file systems cannot store files larger than 4 gigabyte. Note also that you will need a third party tool to create a FAT formatted partition larger than 30 gigabyte. In general, mostly any partitioning software not created by microsoft should do the job. My recommendations for that would be GParted or PartitionMagic.
Please save your files before reformatting the partition, as the process of formatting the partition will erase all data on it.
NOTE: If you are using a professional version of Windows XP (Win Xp corporate or professional) it might also be possible to allow a limited account access to files owned by an administrator using a group policy. But I am not sure about the special group policy rule for this.
Thus, if you have any problems or further questions, please do not hesitate to post here again.