Permissions on files, so many files

August 21, 2012 7:56 PM

I have an old hard drive that was password locked. I can't boot from it, but I can get to the files. I have to change permissions for every single file before I can copy it over, is there a way to do that for everything at once?

It had Windows XP installed on it and the new computer is Windows Vista. I have a few folders of photos and I really really don't want to have to change permissions for every photo. It's a two step process and it is time consuming and boring as hell.

It's just the password for logging in from the main screen, if I could boot from it I'd have been able to just turn off passwords. The motherboard on the old computer is toast, new computer won't boot from old hard drive. Tale as old as time, etc.

posted by Dynex to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: By permissions, do you mean "Read-Only"/"Hidden"/etc?

If so, changing the permission of the top-level folder should pop up a message box asking if the changes should affect all contained files, or just the folder itself.
posted by IAmBroom at 8:05 PM on August 21, 2012

Use the Command Window to set all the attributes to off.

You command will be something like: attrib -r -h *.* /s /d
posted by Confess, Fletch at 8:05 PM on August 21, 2012

Response by poster: IAmBroom - Dang! Little checkbox was hiding on me the whole time. Thank you!
posted by Dynex at 8:11 PM on August 21, 2012