W2K strange file permission problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ofer E
  • Start date Start date
O

Ofer E

Hi Folks,

Our Administrator moved everybody to a different domain.

Now I can't open my old files for read/write.

As strange as it may sound, I can assign me with any imaginable
permission (since my account is an administrator).

Neither me nor my admin has any clue as to the reason why the files
won't open...

The file belongs to me, and I've added it every possible permission on
earth but to no avail. It's accesible to MYDOMAIN/Administrators
MYLOCALPC/Administrators and actually I even added Everyone with full
access, but it had no affect.

The only significant detail is that the "allow" tab is greyed out (all
operations are checked though) and I can't seem to find the reasoning
for that. I mean, after all I own the file, right?

Any Ideas are welcome...
 
Probably you do not own the file. Your old domain user account owns it. If
you can access the file with an administrator account, you should be able to
take ownership. Then you can assign permissions to your new domain account.

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
 
Doug Sherman said:
Probably you do not own the file. Your old domain user account owns it. If
you can access the file with an administrator account, you should be able to
take ownership. Then you can assign permissions to your new domain account.

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
Click to expand...

Thanks Doug,

I thought I knew how to change ownership... This is what I've done:

I went to the file's context menu (by right click) and selected:

properties->security->advanced->Owner

Then I've set the "Current owner of this item" to my current user ID
(ie. the user in the new, current domain).

Do you mean that the above process is not a change of ownership?
If so, can you please describe how to set ownership of a file?
Or do you think I might be encountering another problem, like me not
owning the folder? (The file is set to NOT inherit permissions from
folder)
 
Sounds like you have correctly taken ownership. However, I would do this
for the entire folder, change permissions, and allow inheritance. These
were not encrypted files - right?

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
 
Doug Sherman said:
Sounds like you have correctly taken ownership. However, I would do this
for the entire folder, change permissions, and allow inheritance. These
were not encrypted files - right?

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
Click to expand...

Actually Doug, I'm afraid they WERE!

I mean they were MS Word files, protected with a password.

As far as I recall, when my user ID was changed, I took the "My
Documents" folder and copied it from old account to the new account's
sub folder.

BTW When I look at files under the old account's folder, I can see
that the permissions tab is recognizing the owner as a long Hex
number, probably a sign that the old account is no longer in
existence.

So is there any solution to this, or have I lost my files?
 
Yuck - I think this is an MS Word security issue and I don't know enough
about it. Suggest you try some of the many Word newsgroups - eg.
microsoft.public.word.docmanagement.

If the files were encrypted as well as being password protected, you may be
out of luck. Your old user account had the private encryption key, but that
account no longer exists. Probably the administrator of the old domain was
an authorized recovery agent and could have decrypted the files, but that
account also no longer exists?

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP
 
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