Real Admin

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron Boetger
  • Start date Start date
R

Ron Boetger

How do I make myself the real administrator? I finally was able to
map a drive to my laptop BUT I cant open the Documents & Settings for
my user name.

Thanks
 
In response to your problem with Documents and Settings:

Many folders used by earlier versions of Windows have been moved to a new
location or given a new name in Windows Vista. However, the old folders can
still be seen if you have enabled Show Hidden Files.

Notice they are displayed with a transparent icon and a shortcut symbol.

Although these look like folders, they are actually what is known as a
junction. Junctions behave like shortcuts, but look just like regular
folders.

Their purpose is to silently redirect programs that access them to their
Windows Vista equivalent.

Since junctions aren't really folders, it is not possible to access them,
and any attempt to do so will give you an "Access Denied" error. Even if you
are the "real" administrator.

- JB

Vista Support FAQ
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/
 
Chad Harris said:
Mark can you help me with the concept of "junction"? It gets user here
lately not infrequently and I'm not sure what it means. I see things like
this but am not familiar with term junction.
Click to expand...

Near as I can tell, it's a fancy name for "shortcut" but I suspect there
are some subtle differences that I am unaware.

I am sure Jimmy Bush could explain it much better, in much more detail and
in easy to understand terms.
 
I've noticed some behavior in Vista builds to want to push installations
towards the Documents folder in Vista--which I thought was an odd default
place to wa=nt to force them--I wonder if this has anything to do with
designation of some folders as junctions?

E:\ (or vista drive) Users\Profile Name\Documents

CH
 
In schreef Jimmy Brush:
Since junctions aren't really folders, it is not possible to access
them, and any attempt to do so will give you an "Access Denied"
error. Even if you are the "real" administrator.
Click to expand...

I wonder why these junctions don't direct to the referenced folder when they're clicked on.
"Access denied" doesn't look like how it was meant to work.
Now it's useless to show them in the Explorer.
It's quite remarkable that the meaning is only shown on the command line.
 
Sorry I was not clear enough.

I have mapped a drive from the Vista Machine to my XP machine. I
can see Doc & Setting BUT cant open it from the Vista machine mapped
drivec

The User (ME) and password are the same on both machines.

ALSO I can't map to the default drive C$ on either machine.

Thanks

Ron
 
I agree whole-heartedly.

I believe the reason Explorer doesn't want to deal with them is because they
are very tricky - if you delete it, are you wanting to delete just the
junction or also the folder it points to? Perhaps just one or the other?
What happens if you move the junction to a volume that doesn't support
junctions (such as FAT)? What happens when you delete a folder that contains
junctions?

These questions don't have easy answers and if the system choses the wrong
one the user will be mighty angry. I don't think the shell was designed to
support junctions or symlinks, and that it will have to be re-architected in
the future to support them.

But I agree, just denying access to all of them is the wrong answer - there
should be some way to click on them and follow the shortcut.

- JB

Vista Support FAQ
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/
 
It's my understanding that the installation of software that will only be
used by one user will be made to the user profile directory. Otherwise, if
installing for all users on the entire computer, the install program will
need to ask for elevation to install to Program Files.

I don't think this has anything to do with junctions - more likely the
behavior of windows installer in vista.

This should not affect legacy setup programs - Windows Vista should detect
them and ask for elevation automatically, and they should behave like they
did in earlier versions of windows, by installing to program files or the
directory of their choice.

- JB

Vista Support FAQ
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/
 
Junctions act like symbolic links (I call them soft links) to folders. You
can think of them like a shortcut to a folder. This means that when you
access a junction, the system pretends you are accessing the folder it
points to.

The reason I call them soft links is because if you delete the folder the
junction points to, the junction still exists, but will give an error when
you try to access it (the link was soft and it broke when you deleted its
target).

Although junctions act like shell shortcuts, that is not what they are.
Shell shortcuts can only be used from the shell user interface - when an
application is doing a directory or file list, shell shortcuts appear to a
program as a normal file, nothing special. (For example, you cannot follow a
shell shortcut from the command prompt).

In contrast, junctions appear to applications as normal folders. When an
application does a directory listing on the junction, the listing returned
is the listing for the folder the junction points to, although it appears to
the application like the junction contains those files. Also, if an
application accesses a path that contains a junction, such as
\Junction\folder\file.txt, when the system reaches the junction it jumps to
the folder that the junction points to and then continues processing the
path. In this way, the illusion of the junction is complete - no matter how
an application accesses a junction, be it from a directory listing or by
accessing a path that contains a junction, whenever the system sees a
junction it jumps to the folder it points to and completes the operation.

A junction is implemented as a reparse point. This is a feature of NTFS that
allows an application to easily extend the functionality of the file system.

A reparse point is so named because when the file system hits a file that is
tagged as a reparse point, it looks to see which application created the
reparse point, and what data is stored inside the reparse point. Once the
system finds the app that created the reparse point, it forwards processing
to that app, and the app then gets to "reparse" the path and provide its own
functionality.

Reparse points provide the technical base for the creation of junctions as
well as volume mount points in NTFS, and other filesystem constructs
implemented in Windows.

- JB

Vista Support FAQ
http://www.jimmah.com/vista/
 
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