How to get FULL Admin privileges

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Guest

When needed, I would like to be able to boot my pc so I have absolutely FULL
adminstrator privileges, i.e. so I'm not questionned about the tasks I'd like
to perform.
Case in point: I would like to delete the "My Pictures" folder in "My
Documents". "My Documents" is located on my D-partition. However, when I try
to delete, I'm sometimes told I need Adminstrator rights or sometimes that I
can't delete because the folder is open somewhere else (not specifying where).
I believe when I boot (start) my pc, I get to my account which should have
admin rights. I have only one account and I'm not prompted for username and
password, but boot straight to desktop.

How can I gain absolute and full control over my own pc whenever I want to?
 
Just fyi -- on my computer, my main hard drive is "C"; the "D" partition is
reserved for System Recovery. If your "D" is your recovery partition, you
might not want to be messing with it...personally I like Vista to question
me, it has saved me from myself on a couple of occasions...
 
The symptom you are seeing is caused by permissions on the D drive that do
not grant you full control over your folder. How did that folder get there in
the first place? If you moved it using the normal means (by using folder
redirection) it would have received a proper set of permissions. If you moved
it manually and then hacked the registry then you would see the symptoms you
are seeing.

To get full and unfettered access to your system you need to boot in safe
mode, or go through a few UAC elevation prompts.
 
John & Jesper,

Thanks for your reply. My main drive is also "C", but for easier backup
management I am saving all my work to my "D" partition. I have yet another
partition for recovery, and an external HD for backup. In general, I don't
mind Vista questioning me, but I get annoyed when I try to invoke my admin
rights, and I'm still denied action.

I used redirection of the folder to "move" My Documents to the "D"
partition. I did not move manually and did not hack my registry.

So, the question still remains: How do I get FULL Admin privileges when I
want to? And that without the extra hassle of rebooting to Safe Mode each
time I want to do something.

How can I get the same Admin rights as in XP?

I need real solutions!

Tor-Eddie
 
The only way to get the same admin rights as in XP is to disable UAC. That's
a really bad idea though, for reasons outlined too many times to count in
this newsgroup.

The better option is to work with the OS by not trying to change it too
much. For good and bad, it has become a bit less flexible with the separation
of privileges. These are separations that users of other operating systems
have worked with for many years, but for Windows users they are new.

In your case I wonder if the problem is really permissions though if you
used folder redirection to move the folders. It could also be that something
holds the folder open. In either case you would get an access denied error
when you try to delete it, so to the user the problem appears the same. If it
is permisions the fix should be easy though. Open a command prompt as an
administrator, and run this command:

icacls d:\<foldername> /grant <username>:F /T

Replace <foldername> with your My Documents folder and <username> with your
username. That should take care of it if it is permissions related.
 
Thanks Jesper. And if it is something that holds it open, how do I solve this
issue? How do I find out what holds it open?
 
It is actually not easy to either determine whether something holds it open
or resolving it. Normally it should be obvious. For instance, if you have a
picture open in a picture editor you cannot delete the folder that picture is
in. However, in some cases programs run silently in the background, or simply
do not release their handles (Outlook has been notorious for not releasing
handles of PST files, for example). In that case it is not at all obvious.

To find out which handles are open you need Process Explorer
(http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/ProcessExplorer.mspx).
It can search for handles and even close them. However, not only is Process
Explorer most definitely a power tool beyond most ordinary users, forcing
handles closed can also destabilize the system. For the interested, Process
Explorer is a must-have that goes on the system as soon as it is installed.
For the rest, the easier option is to log off and back on.

FWIW, I have seen cases where the indexing services hold things open and
prevent deletion. To see if that is the case, if you try to delete something
and it is not obviously open, wait a few minutes and try again.
 
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