My Documents - Read Only

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Guest

I haven't a clue what to do at this point.

Running a fresh install of XP Pro on a newly formated HD (NTFS).

Log'ed in as the Admin (user is also a member of Power Users).

I've checked and the user is the owner of the folder. Simply file sharing
is turned off.

Basically once I unset readonly, it reverts immediately back. Tried the
'normal' solutions found in google - but to no avail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks
 
The read-only attribute is set on My Documents & some other system folders to tell Explorer the
folder has a desktop.ini file, which sets the special icon and display name of the folder. The
read-only attribute does not affect the ability to read & write files to the folder.

Also, the read-only checkbox in the folder's property dialog is not an accurate indicator of the
folder's attribute status. If you want to check whether or not the attribute is set, add the
'Attributes' column to an Explorer detail view or use the 'attrib' command in a Command Prompt
window.
 
I haven't a clue what to do at this point.

Running a fresh install of XP Pro on a newly formated HD (NTFS).

Log'ed in as the Admin (user is also a member of Power Users).

I've checked and the user is the owner of the folder. Simply file sharing
is turned off.

Basically once I unset readonly, it reverts immediately back. Tried the
'normal' solutions found in google - but to no avail.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. thanks
Click to expand...

The read only attribute doesn't mean anything for a folder in XP. It's
actually in an indeterminate state. See this article for more info.

You Cannot View or Change the Read-Only or System Attribute of Folders
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/326549/en-us

From this article:

"Unlike the Read-only attribute for a file, the Read-only attribute for a
folder is typically ignored by Windows, Windows components and accessories,
and other programs. For example, you can delete, rename, and change a folder
with the Read-only attribute by using Windows Explorer. The Read-only and
System attributes is only used by Windows Explorer to determine whether the
folder is a special folder, such as a system folder that has its view
customized by Windows (for example, My Documents, Favorites, Fonts,
Downloaded Program Files), or a folder that you customized by using the
Customize tab of the folder's Properties dialog box. As a result, Windows
Explorer does not allow you to view or change the Read-only or System
attributes of folders. When a folder has the Read-Only attribute set it
causes Explorer to request the Desktop.ini of that folder to see if any
special folder settings need to be set. It has been seen where if a network
share that has a large amount of folders set to Read-only, it can cause
Explorer to take longer then what is expected to render the contents of that
share while it waits on the retrieval of the Desktop.ini files. The slower
the network connectivity to the share the longer this process can take to
the point where Explorer may timeout waiting for the data and render nothing
or appear to hang."
 
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