Cannot access the D: drive after adjusting the permissions

[Krizalid99v2]

Operating System is Windows XP Home Edition

The system has one physical hard drive which is partitioned into two drives, C: and D: drive. The OS has 4 User accounts/profiles.

The owner of the system (the Administrator) wanted to set permissions so that the 'Guest' account cannot access specified drives and folders. We did this by going into Safe Mode, right-clicking onto a drive, going into the 'Security' tab and doing the job there (you may remember my thread a week ago asking how to do this).

So in the Security tab section, I tried to figure out which username belonged to which group as it didn't tell you, so I tried guessing and checking all the boxes to Deny for the groups which wasn't an Administrator. I then returned them to normal and decided to add the Guest account into the Group section (by clicking the Add button, typing in the user name, click Check Names, and OK) and then check all the boxes of Deny to this user account.

After I restarted and logged into the Guest account it was fine, as you cannot access the D: anymore. Seems fine, until I logged in using the main account which has Administrator privileges, and found out that I couldn't access the D: either - despite having Administrator status. So after that I went back into Safe mode, into the 'real' Admistrator account (the one that doesn't appear in normal mode), and checked all the Allow boxes for every group, hoping it would fix it. I then restarted the machine, went into the main user account and found out I still cannot access the D: drive, where all the personal files are.

I went back into Safe Mode, back into the 'Security' tab and every Group's permissions are set to 'Allow', except for the Users (-----/Users) group which only have some permissions set to Allow - but that's normal anyway by default. Also I have noticed the groups 'CREATOR OWNER' and 'Everyone' have all it's boxes blanked out, but has the 'Special Permissions' checked, which you cannot change. Could that have something to do with the problem?

Can anyone help me fix this? What's the problem? Are there any hidden Groups/Usernames I have to bring up and set permissions? Is it a fault of the OS?

Any help will be most appreciated, thanks for your time.

 

[pc3957]

Hi,

Have you tried going into the Security Properties window (where you changed the priviliages) and clicking the Advanced button. From Advanced Security Properties you should try setting the Owner to Administrator and ticking the checkbox that says Apply to child objects as well. Apply the setting and then adjust the security privilages like this: Remove all privilages first, then explicitly add each user that needs access granting them full permission. If you have removed all others, there will be no need to deny the guest account (although you can explicity do so if you wish). Again verify that the change all child objects is set and apply settings.

Please note that it is not good procedure to explicitly define privilages to users, but in this small application it might be the most simple.

Anyways, hope this helps.

 

[linney]

How To Reset Security Settings Back to the Defaults

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=313222#1

NCS AccountView - Windows account manager

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/system/fwpowertools.html

NCS AccountView is a power tool for 2000/XP/2003 account management. In addition to the standard account management functions, it offers the option to create Groups in Windows XP Home Edition, as well as management of hidden accounts. It also allows you to restrict login based on time of day (e.g only allow user to login during business hours). Additional features include account import and export, display of SID for each account and more.