Win7: Need Permission from Owner to Copy File. I am the Owner.
December 8, 2015 8:00 PM Subscribe
My wife's laptop has several large (100MB through 10GB) pst files. We can move, rename and delete these files but we cannot copy them nor open them in Outlook. Msg says I need permission from domainX\userY. That's me. And I'm the owner.
My wife had an issue on her work laptop. The corporate IT folks (CapGem) tried to fix it remotely, but ending up locking her out. After a day they finally managed to get her back in and fix the issue. All is good but now, for some reason, The only issue now is that she cannot access several PST files in a sub folder of documents.
She is an admin of the machine and owner of the files. If I try and copy one of the files I get this message:
Just for the sake of it I created myself as a new local admin on the machine, assuming ownership and made sure I had full control (and read, write etc.) in permissions. But all that's done is change the message to
My wife had an issue on her work laptop. The corporate IT folks (CapGem) tried to fix it remotely, but ending up locking her out. After a day they finally managed to get her back in and fix the issue. All is good but now, for some reason, The only issue now is that she cannot access several PST files in a sub folder of documents.
She is an admin of the machine and owner of the files. If I try and copy one of the files I get this message:
You need permission to perform this actionI cannot open the file either. But I can rename, delete and move it to other folders on this machine. (But not to a different machine unfortunately.) This is a commonly reported issue and all the solutions suggest taking ownership of the file and assigning yourself full control. Unfortunately she already is the owner and has full control.
You require permission from mywife'sdomain\mywife to make changes to this file.
Just for the sake of it I created myself as a new local admin on the machine, assuming ownership and made sure I had full control (and read, write etc.) in permissions. But all that's done is change the message to
You require permission from machinename\nailsthecatThe laptop has Symantec Endpoint--I've tried disabling it. UAC was already set to Never Notify. Any ideas?
I think that there is a download from Microsoft, Take Ownership. At least there was for XP.
posted by Chitownfats at 8:35 PM on December 8, 2015
posted by Chitownfats at 8:35 PM on December 8, 2015
Response by poster: Thanks for the answers. I already did change the owner. I took ownership as her--to no avail. Then I created a new user (me). Logged on as that user. Used that new user to take ownership and set permissions. Same problem manifests--just an updated domain/user in the error msg. (That shown above.)
Re. Take Ownership download: There's a tweak to the registry that makes Take Ownership available in the Windows Explorer right click context menu to save you drilling down through all the screens--but I've already set ownership--several times--so that's not the issue unfortunately.
posted by NailsTheCat at 8:43 PM on December 8, 2015
Re. Take Ownership download: There's a tweak to the registry that makes Take Ownership available in the Windows Explorer right click context menu to save you drilling down through all the screens--but I've already set ownership--several times--so that's not the issue unfortunately.
posted by NailsTheCat at 8:43 PM on December 8, 2015
Have you tried copying or moving the files from a command prompt, as administrator? Sometimes this magically works.
posted by in278s at 9:33 PM on December 8, 2015
posted by in278s at 9:33 PM on December 8, 2015
Are you able to access the files via a Webmail account by any chance? The last time I had this issue (Outlook 2007, Win 7, company laptop) I did some Googling and found that I was able to delete the folders if I logged in via webmail. I've no idea why it worked, but it did.
posted by ninazer0 at 9:34 PM on December 8, 2015
posted by ninazer0 at 9:34 PM on December 8, 2015
Response by poster: Command prompt: Great idea. Copying didn't work unfortunately: Access is denied. file(s) copied. (I can move however just as I can through the UI. Bizarrely.)
Webmail: If I understand you correctly, I don't think so. The PST files are locally stored, so she normally has them open with her local Outlook account. Outlook cannot open them anymore. Webmail wouldn't have access to these folders since the mapping from Outlook to the PST files is local only. (I cannot test because it requires her VPN connection and she's in bed...)
Your suggestions are much appreciated!
posted by NailsTheCat at 10:05 PM on December 8, 2015
Webmail: If I understand you correctly, I don't think so. The PST files are locally stored, so she normally has them open with her local Outlook account. Outlook cannot open them anymore. Webmail wouldn't have access to these folders since the mapping from Outlook to the PST files is local only. (I cannot test because it requires her VPN connection and she's in bed...)
Your suggestions are much appreciated!
posted by NailsTheCat at 10:05 PM on December 8, 2015
Ownership is only half of the battle. You should also double check that the user also has permission to read and write the file.
posted by Aleyn at 12:19 AM on December 9, 2015
posted by Aleyn at 12:19 AM on December 9, 2015
Check the permissions of the folder containing the files in question. The files may have an inherited permission from the enclosing folder.
That or the certificate thing, which would suck.
posted by daq at 12:39 AM on December 9, 2015
That or the certificate thing, which would suck.
posted by daq at 12:39 AM on December 9, 2015
Best answer: Let's assume it's not an ownership/privs thing on the pst(s). Does the machine have enough disk space to make a copy? Look higher up in the folder structure and check privs. What did corporate IT do to her account? It's possible they fudged something up there. The last Fortune 100 company I worked for enforced 3rd-party disk encryption on all laptops so that could be another factor.
posted by LoveHam at 4:43 AM on December 9, 2015
posted by LoveHam at 4:43 AM on December 9, 2015
Response by poster: re. permission: yes, that's the step noted above where I gave the original user and then the new user full control (and all the others). I just doublechecked it all again.
inherited permission: good idea. It certainly is / was inherited. I realized later that this applies to the contents of mywife\Documents. However, since I can move (and indeed delete and rename) the files, I had tried creating a new folder 'c:\metemp' to which I have full control and am the owner and moved a file there. Still no dice: I can also see in permissions that I am the owner and have full control both explicitly and inherited. (And if I copy that new folder, it copies the folder but not the file--same error as usual when it gets to that file.)
Other issues: plenty of space etc. I also read that it changing sharing can help so I just shared (read/write) the above folder and file. When I connect from my laptop I can rename the file but I cannot copy it to my machine.
More background: We don't know what IT did. They are wringing their hands too and today are passing it over to the main (i.e. internal) IT department. Unfortunately, my wife heads out on a business trip today and will be out of their help range and unable to access any files.
Thanks for the help so far.
posted by NailsTheCat at 5:23 AM on December 9, 2015
inherited permission: good idea. It certainly is / was inherited. I realized later that this applies to the contents of mywife\Documents. However, since I can move (and indeed delete and rename) the files, I had tried creating a new folder 'c:\metemp' to which I have full control and am the owner and moved a file there. Still no dice: I can also see in permissions that I am the owner and have full control both explicitly and inherited. (And if I copy that new folder, it copies the folder but not the file--same error as usual when it gets to that file.)
Other issues: plenty of space etc. I also read that it changing sharing can help so I just shared (read/write) the above folder and file. When I connect from my laptop I can rename the file but I cannot copy it to my machine.
More background: We don't know what IT did. They are wringing their hands too and today are passing it over to the main (i.e. internal) IT department. Unfortunately, my wife heads out on a business trip today and will be out of their help range and unable to access any files.
Thanks for the help so far.
posted by NailsTheCat at 5:23 AM on December 9, 2015
Response by poster: Forgot to mention: I think you're right, LoveHam, that ownership / privs may be a red herring--the wrong error message perhaps. It's odd that I can do everything (delete, move, rename) other than read / copy. I don't think it's encrypted... but not sure how to check. (Nothing is checked under File Properties > General > [Advanced].)
posted by NailsTheCat at 5:44 AM on December 9, 2015
posted by NailsTheCat at 5:44 AM on December 9, 2015
Response by poster: I've just noticed that if I try and open a file in Excel I get an error message about 'wrong file extension'. I think this is pointing more and more to an encryption issue. When she logs in there is an ActivIdentity dialogue which reports that she failed to authenticate--you can retry but there's no opportunity to enter credentials that I can see. I've never used encryption so out of my depth now.
posted by NailsTheCat at 5:58 AM on December 9, 2015
posted by NailsTheCat at 5:58 AM on December 9, 2015
Response by poster: Don't like to threadsit but it seems only fair to share developments rather than have people speculate a now closed path.
I explained to my wife why I think it's an encryption issue. It turns out that there was a Credant dialogue that started appearing a while ago. When support locked her out of the laptop--looking at performance issues--not sure what else they did but the dialogue disappeared. So my guess is that they uninstalled Credant. She doesn't know whether that was corporately installed or her Dell laptop--who own Credant--started it (perhaps with an erroneous user click). And note that it appears only Documents is encrypted--if that's what it is--desktop is fine.
posted by NailsTheCat at 6:14 AM on December 9, 2015
I explained to my wife why I think it's an encryption issue. It turns out that there was a Credant dialogue that started appearing a while ago. When support locked her out of the laptop--looking at performance issues--not sure what else they did but the dialogue disappeared. So my guess is that they uninstalled Credant. She doesn't know whether that was corporately installed or her Dell laptop--who own Credant--started it (perhaps with an erroneous user click). And note that it appears only Documents is encrypted--if that's what it is--desktop is fine.
posted by NailsTheCat at 6:14 AM on December 9, 2015
Response by poster: Finally resolved this. It was indeed an encryption issue. As far as I can tell, the third party helpdesk folks uninstalled Credant, rendering all the document folder's content unreadable. So the error messages about ownership (for files that were owned) were just noise. The corporate IT folks finally got involved today and reinstalled Credant. That one mistake apparently created a few more problems but they've just about resolved it now. Thanks for your help folks.
posted by NailsTheCat at 7:43 PM on December 11, 2015
posted by NailsTheCat at 7:43 PM on December 11, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
The other possibility is that the files were protected by Windows based encryption. In this case, they could only be accessed or copied if you had access to the security certificate. I think this is lost if the account is reset. Your IT folks would need to look into how it was implemented and if it was backed up. See http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/how-do-i-open-a-file-if-i-get-an-access-denied-message for how to check this setting.
posted by nalyd at 8:29 PM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]