Folder symbol..

[BEW]

Just bought a laptop with Windows 7. Some folders have a lock symbol and
click results in "Access Denied" . Don't know how I did this and how to
undo. Will appreciate any help. Need more info?

 

[BillW50]

Just bought a laptop with Windows 7. Some folders have a lock symbol and
click results in "Access Denied" . Don't know how I did this and how to
undo. Will appreciate any help. Need more info?

You didn't do anything wrong! It is Microsoft's doing. And the new
Windows (Vista and Windows 7) treats *all* users as idiots. And being an
idiot, you are not allowed to go in those folders. Even if you are the
administrator, you are *not* allowed to go in there.

Some folders are not even real folders with files in there. Take that
"Documents and Settings" folder for example. It isn't really there. It
is only there because some programs expect it to be there. And any
program that wants to write there gets redirected to the Users folder
instead.

 

[Ed Cryer]

You didn't do anything wrong! It is Microsoft's doing. And the new
Windows (Vista and Windows 7) treats *all* users as idiots. And being an
idiot, you are not allowed to go in those folders. Even if you are the
administrator, you are *not* allowed to go in there.

Some folders are not even real folders with files in there. Take that
"Documents and Settings" folder for example. It isn't really there. It
is only there because some programs expect it to be there. And any
program that wants to write there gets redirected to the Users folder
instead.

I find that I can go into the folders that actually contain subfiles;
but not those that are simply routing signs.

In the Windows folder I can go into Prefetch, Minidump, LiveKernelReports.

Ed

 

[BEW]

You didn't do anything wrong! It is Microsoft's doing. And the new Windows
(Vista and Windows 7) treats *all* users as idiots. And being an idiot,
you are not allowed to go in those folders. Even if you are the
administrator, you are *not* allowed to go in there.

Some folders are not even real folders with files in there. Take that
"Documents and Settings" folder for example. It isn't really there. It is
only there because some programs expect it to be there. And any program
that wants to write there gets redirected to the Users folder instead.

Thanks.. Hope my hair grows back soon :-}.

 

[BillW50]

I find that I can go into the folders that actually contain subfiles;
but not those that are simply routing signs.

In the Windows folder I can go into Prefetch, Minidump, LiveKernelReports.

Ed

That isn't true the first time you try, Ed. As it tells you that you
don't have access. But for those folders it tells you to click the
Continue button to always allow access here (as long as you have high
enough access).

 

[BillW50]

Perfect OS for you, then.

Nope! Perfect for you Alias. As you can't even recall anything we
already covered with you like Windows security and how to never get a
virus. And once I teach you how to do it. You within days totally forget
everything we already covered.

One current theory is that you are nothing but a troll and want to just
waste other people time in arguments.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, BEW.

Seems we discuss this here every week, but "there's always someone who
didn't get the memo". ;^}

See my 6/10/11 reply to sharonf in the thread, Two folders marked "My
Documents", in this newsgroup.

In short, some folders are "Junction Points", not folders at all. Nothing
malicious (as some imply), but simply another of Microsoft's awkward ways to
move us from WinXP into Win7 - while retaining backward compatibility.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3508.1109) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"BEW" wrote in message
Just bought a laptop with Windows 7. Some folders have a lock symbol and
click results in "Access Denied" . Don't know how I did this and how to
undo. Will appreciate any help. Need more info?

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

Hi, BEW.

Seems we discuss this here every week, but "there's always someone
who didn't get the memo". ;^}

See my 6/10/11 reply to sharonf in the thread, Two folders marked "My
Documents", in this newsgroup.

In short, some folders are "Junction Points", not folders at all.
Nothing malicious (as some imply), but simply another of Microsoft's
awkward ways to move us from WinXP into Win7 - while retaining
backward compatibility.

I wish Windows had a "Single user" option that would do away with all
this junction point and user business, sort of a NT Windows 98.

 

[BillW50]

I wish Windows had a "Single user" option that would do away with all
this junction point and user business, sort of a NT Windows 98.

You and me both! The closest thing to such a NT OS like this is WinPE.

 

[choro]

Perfect OS for you, then.

Brilliant!
-- choro --

 

[choro]

Nope! Perfect for you Alias. As you can't even recall anything we
already covered with you like Windows security and how to never get a
virus. And once I teach you how to do it. You within days totally forget
everything we already covered.

One current theory is that you are nothing but a troll and want to just
waste other people time in arguments.

Alias got a "Brilliant!" from me. You don't qualify. Too verbose.
You should be brief and to the point!
-- choro --

 

[Ed Cryer]

Alias got a "Brilliant!" from me. You don't qualify. Too verbose.
You should be brief and to the point!
-- choro --

What do you prefer? Good, sound advice or sharp repartee?
The latter, nisi fallor.

Ed

 

[BillW50]

In

Alias got a "Brilliant!" from me. You don't qualify. Too verbose.
You should be brief and to the point!

Sixty five words too wordy for you? Man are you in trouble.

 

[VanguardLH]

Hi, BEW.

Seems we discuss this here every week, but "there's always someone who
didn't get the memo". ;^}

See my 6/10/11 reply to sharonf in the thread, Two folders marked "My
Documents", in this newsgroup.

In short, some folders are "Junction Points", not folders at all. Nothing
malicious (as some imply), but simply another of Microsoft's awkward ways to
move us from WinXP into Win7 - while retaining backward compatibility.

RC

Seems more like Microsoft decided (long ago back in NTFS v3) to emulate
some UNIX features. Their junction (reparse) points are akin to soft
links in UNIX. While hard links can be defined, I haven't seen them
used muchs, probably because Microsoft figures too many Windows users
are boobs to understand hard links; else, users would be deleting the
hard links and the source files, too.

There's nothing new to using junctions available when you use NTFS. It
was there back in Windows 2000, too (I never used them before that).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_reparse_point

It ain't a Windows 7 thing. It's just getting more used. While they
are getting used more often (and not just by Microsoft), Microsoft
continues to not provide any decent tools for creating or identifying
them within the typical distros for Windows.

There are a lot of features or behavior that was copied from UNIX into
Windows. After all, Windows didn't pop into existence from a vacuum.
Soft/hard links are something with which users of *NIX would be
familiar, so it wouldn't be strange to them to find them available in
NTFS. Programmers are familiar with them. Users don't know about them
primarily because no reparse-for-boobs tools are provided to them in
Windows. Users have to find 3rd party tools that some programmer wrote
up to start using reparse points.

 

[Seth]

I wish Windows had a "Single user" option that would do away with all
this junction point and user business, sort of a NT Windows 98.

Single User mode wouldn't get rid of junction-points. Only a complete
abandonment of legacy software support would. Imagine the outcry when tons
pre-Vista applications don't work in Windows 7.

 

[Rob]

Seems more like Microsoft decided (long ago back in NTFS v3) to emulate
some UNIX features. Their junction (reparse) points are akin to soft
links in UNIX. While hard links can be defined, I haven't seen them
used muchs, probably because Microsoft figures too many Windows users
are boobs to understand hard links; else, users would be deleting the
hard links and the source files, too.

There's nothing new to using junctions available when you use NTFS. It
was there back in Windows 2000, too (I never used them before that).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_reparse_point

It ain't a Windows 7 thing. It's just getting more used. While they
are getting used more often (and not just by Microsoft), Microsoft
continues to not provide any decent tools for creating or identifying
them within the typical distros for Windows.

There are a lot of features or behavior that was copied from UNIX into
Windows. After all, Windows didn't pop into existence from a vacuum.
Soft/hard links are something with which users of *NIX would be
familiar, so it wouldn't be strange to them to find them available in
NTFS. Programmers are familiar with them. Users don't know about them
primarily because no reparse-for-boobs tools are provided to them in
Windows. Users have to find 3rd party tools that some programmer wrote
up to start using reparse points.

Yeah, we should go back to a black screen with a single flashing
green underscore symbol. Typing "help" without a delimiter should
be responded to with "Syntax error".

 

[Dave \Crash\ Dummy]

Yeah, we should go back to a black screen with a single flashing
green underscore symbol. Typing "help" without a delimiter should
be responded to with "Syntax error".

Those were the days, when all applications were portable!
(Usually on several floppy disks.)

 

[VanguardLH]

Those were the days, when all applications were portable!
(Usually on several floppy disks.)

I think the largest "portable" DOS app that I had occupied 14 floppies.
Oh joy, what a feeling having to repeatedly change floppies let along
lug them around. Once you piled them on your desk, oh joy, having to
pick them up but them sliding apart and spraying all over the place.

And, of course, it was such a joy doing multi-tasking instead of
multi-processing while also running out of memory all running on the
slow small-sized hard disks and using good ol' tape drives for backups
and large data storage.

Oh yes, the good old days when what you do now in a few minutes took
hours before.

 

[VanguardLH]

Single User mode wouldn't get rid of junction-points. Only a complete
abandonment of legacy software support would. Imagine the outcry when tons
pre-Vista applications don't work in Windows 7.

Junctions weren't created to support legacy apps. They're used by
recent apps, too.

- I want a C:\Reference folder available to all users (but it could be
located elsewhere, especially if we add NAS storage) but I want a
shortcut to it in my Start menu. I don't want a folder shortcut because
clicking on it opens Windows Explorer to that folder. Instead I want to
hover over Start -> My Documents -> References and have a sub-menu
appear that shows the hierarchy of files and subfolders under that
folder. So I create a junction at Start -> My Documents -> References
that points to C:\References. Getting at the reference docs is as easy
as navigating the Start menu, same as you do if you add Control Panel to
the Start menu and can see the applets therein instead of having to open
that pseudo-folder.

- Some apps don't behave like I want. Virtual PC demands storing its
virtual machine files under My Documents but I don't want those huge
files on my C: drive that gets backed up daily. I can recreate those
..vhd files and don't need them wasting space in my daily backups. So I
move them to D:\VirtualPC but VPC still wants to find them under My
Documents. So I delete the My Documents\VirtualMachines folder and
replace it with a junction pointing at D:\VirtualPC. Then when VPC adds
entries or stores files under My Documents\VirtualMachines, there are no
files there that would occupy by backups but instead they're all back on
D:\VirtualPC (stuff on D: doesn't get backed up). Directory
substitution (subst command) doesn't always work and redirect to drives
whereas junctions let me effectively move a path to a different location
when the application doesn't let me reconfigure that path.

I'm sure there are lots of uses for junctions other that what I've
thought of or had use for so far. However, I see nothing about
junctions that implies they were included to support for legacy apps.
Soft and hard links in UNIX aren't for just legacy apps, either.

 

[Nil]

I think the largest "portable" DOS app that I had occupied 14
floppies. Oh joy, what a feeling having to repeatedly change
floppies let along lug them around. Once you piled them on your
desk, oh joy, having to pick them up but them sliding apart and
spraying all over the place.

And hoping that disk #13 hadn't become corrupt or demagnatized...