Vista won't delete folders unless empty (Maxtor Shared Storage)

  • Thread starter Thread starter nowbegreat
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nowbegreat

I have an MSS 200 Gb that works fine with all Windows XP SP2
computers. My new Vista Ultimate PC recognizes, reads, writes, copies,
deletes files in the MSS no problem, except I cannot delete any
folders in the drive unless they are empty first. What gives?

Also, this is a public folder (not password protected--never has been--
even under XP). Reading through Maxtor Knowledgebase, I see that
Maxtor MSS drives don't work properly under Vista if folders are
password protected... so that's not it.

I get the feeling this has to do with permissions somehow... Any help
would be greatly appreciated. /pg.
 
Hi,

You're probably right in your suspicions. Try taking ownership of the folder
from the security tab of the folder's properties. When you do, make sure you
also enable the line for this change to propagate to all subcontainers and
objects. If you don't, then you may not have the appropriate security level
to delete something within the folder, and be blocked from completing that
function.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
My thoughts http://rick-mvp.blogspot.com
 
I had this problem sporadically until the last round of Vista updates.

It is an ownership problem of some sort, but I cannot change the ownership
to fix it. Everything looks correct as far as permissions and ownership. If
I change the ownership, or permissions, the next time I look, they are back
where they were.

In the "old" days with DOS, you could not delete a directory if there were
any files in the directory. That is what this problem looks like, but it
is not caused by all files, only certain ones. If I delete the files in the
folder, then I can delete the folder.

When I encounter the problem, if I want to delete a folder, or rename
a folder, the folder has to be empty before I am allowed to do those
things. This is an intermittent problem, and seems to be associated with
folders that I have copied from/to other hard drives.

I have, on one occasion, tracked it down to one particular
file in a folder. That file looked fine, but if it was in the folder, I
could not
delete the folder. I could make a copy of the offending file, put it in a
folder, and that folder could be deleted. So, it appears to be a file
ownership problem, but if I own the thing, what is Vista thinking?

It is as if there is a "super owner" that sometimes takes ownership of
a file and won't let its folder be deleted. I have no idea how that is
possible.

Like I said, I have not seen the problem since the last batch of updates.
 
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