Andrew just wants to open his files on Windows 10

Good luck with opening the subdirectories of C:\WindowsApps\. I ran Explorer as admin, gave myself R/W permissions, even recursively changed ownership of everything, followed all the online guides... Still denied access.

Why can't I delete System32? It's taking up space.

I prefer the answer of giving the giy the reins and letting him get it so riddled with viruses then when he calls for support replying "sorry, your property your problem. You have absolute dominion over it and thus we give no warranty as we have no responsibility."

Reminds me of the “chmod 777” crowd at work. Goddamn it.

😂👌 this

I think Andrew might be a lawyer.

My roommate for a couple years in college was pre-law, and did some internships after graduation but before gaining his own law degree. He mentioned at one point how absolutely and hilariously pervasive it was at the firm he was working for attorneys to just run screaming to IT every single time literally anything was even the slightest bit inconvenient or obtuse (to their understanding). Part of it was the logic of “I bill clients at $800/hr, I am not spending my time to resolve whatever this hiccup is”, but part of it was absolutely also some bullshit power dynamics.

Yeah like, complain about the one thing MS is finally improving in recent years, clamping down on non-admin users and non-admin permissions.

He doesn't exactly come across as happy...

Never listen to anyone who is perfectly satisfied with being angry at everything.

"Real Men Run As Root"

https://www.garyshood.com/root/

Real superuser allow every programs and services run as root

I discovered basic versions of windows are even more restrictive when I was unable to install my favorite lightweight pdf reader in a friend's laptop because Windows home just said that for my safety I wasn't allowed. With no option to bypass this limitation being hinted at.

Ended up installing it anyways but had to run the installer from an admin terminal (luckily it was windows 7 so it was a local account with admin rights instead of a bullshit Microsoft one)

that made it’s own files untouchable

that made its* own files untouchable

Most of the annoying stuff that Linux users hate about Windows are because Windows has to cater to even the least technologically knowledgeable users.

It is why Windows updates are forced, why so many files are locked behind SYSTEM user and can't easily be circumvented, why some settings are registry or Group Policy only, why some settings are opt out, ...

Without those, their support center would blow up.

So if Linux wants to become mainstream, it will have to cater to those users as well. And Linux will slowly turn into Windows.

HE SHOULDN'T HAVE TO LOG IN AS ROOT. IT'S HIS COMPUTER!!!!!!

Why Windows doesn't have an 'expert mode' (2003)

He could alternatively go to...

Stackoverflow or Superuser, where the answer will be "use the search bar you imbecile, locked."

Quora, where every question is blatant rage bait like "my 14 year old son got a B in his test. I took away his PS5 and chained him in the basement as punishment but his grades aren't improving. How can I make him better at math?"

Yahoo Answers which is dead, and was basically Quora before Quora was a thing.

Or Reddit, where you can't even post on 95% of subs without hitting a minimum karma threshold and where some basement dwelling mod will likely ban you for breaking hidden rule #263, then modmail mute you for 28 days without reply if you try to appeal.

I think any Q&A site is absolute dog water now.

Always know your escape characters! Usually works

(I wonder how many clients show that as double backslash)

Right?

This reeks of inexperience.

We lock things down because a malicious program can easily be "owned" by the user through stupid choices. And now you got viruses.

This is a way to stupid proof things. And the workaround isnt difficult, but it's to stop people like Andrew. And so far, success.

There's an OS you might like. It has no UAC, no file permissions, no sudo nor chmod, as it has no multi-user support, no antivirus and no firewall, no protection rings, not even spectre/meltdown mitigations, and most of all - no guard-rails whatsoever: You can patch the kernel directly at runtime and it won't even give you a warn. And yet, it is perfectly safe to run. It's called TempleOS and it achieves such a flawless security by having no networking support whatsoever and barely any support for removable media. If you want a piece a software - you just code it in, manually. You don't have to check the code for backdoors if it's entirely written by you... only for CIA at your actual back door...

What does 'modems in mobile phones' mean? Isn't the whole thing a modem strapped onto a screen? What am I missing?

Open the files in any non-windows system and do what ever the hell you want.

"sudo is not recognized an an internal or external command"

Package "linux" is already the newest version.

French or standard?

Not to mention there is no admin anymore, it's essentially a sudo style with it popping up asking are you sure.

This though really reeks of their son dragged and dropped their old files onto a new computer and didn't set the NTFS permissions, and purposely set them up as a non admin so they wouldn't bother them with "I got a new virus". When I have an elderly relative ask for me to set up their computer I don't give them admin rights

Strong Disagree, the GUI equivalent of chown is a bizarrely long series of clicks that less knowledgeable users will easily get confused doing.

There are versions of OS/2 or BeOS that might fit his style. Although they're called something else nowadays.

I think what happened here is that something went wrong and messed up the permissions of some of the users files. MS help suggested that he login as an administrator and reatore the intended permissions.

I don't work with Windows boxes, but see a similar situation come up often enough on Linux boxes. Typically, the cause is that the user elevated to root (e.g. the administrator account) and did something that probably should have been done from their normal account. Now, root owns some user files and things are a big mess until you go back to root and restore the permissions.

It use to be that this type of thing was not an issue on single user machines, because the one user had full privileges. The industry has since settled on a model of a single user nachine where the user typically has limited privileges, but can elevate when needed. This protects against a lot of ways a user can accidentally destroy their system.

Having said that, my understanding of Windows is that in a typical single user setup, you can elevate a single program to admin privileges by right clicking and selecting "run as administrator", so the advice to login as an administrator may not have been nessasary.

I'm a sysadmin and I work with Windows a lot.

The short version is that only the users granted permission to a given set of files can access those files. With NTFS permissions it's... Complicated. You can have explicit permission to a file, or implied permission via a group that you're a part of, or some combination of those things. You can also have read, but no write. You can have append but not create, you can have delete, but not list. It's a lot of very granular, very crazy permissions.

There's also deny permissions which overrule everything.

What has likely happened is that the posters user account doesn't have implied or explicit permission to the file, but if you sign in as an administrator, even if the administrator doesn't have permission to read/write/append/delete the file, the administrator has permission to take ownership of a file, and as owner, change the permissions of a file. Being owner doesn't mean you can open/read/write/append/delete anything, you can just change permissions and give yourself (or anyone else) permissions to the file.

Changing ownership is a right which, as far as I'm aware, cannot be revoked from admin level users. They can always change ownership. Owners of files cannot be denied the right to change the permissions of a file as far as I know. This will always result in some method by which administrative level accounts can recover access to files and folders.

In my experience, exceptions exist but are extremely rare (usually to do with kernel level stuff, and/or lockouts by security/AV software).

The poster might legally and physically own the device and all the data contained therein, and may have an administrative level account on that device, but the fact is, their NTFS permissions are not set to allow them access to the data. The post they're replying to is trying to let them know how to fix it by using an administrative level account and they're not tech-savvy enough to follow along.

I don't blame them. File permissions issues are challenging even for me, and I fully understand the problem.