I’ve recently installed Windows 7 on my desktop and I’m trying to migrate files from the laptop’s hard disk.

Whenever I try to copy files from a folder that I do not have permissions to, it asks me if I want to gain “permanent access” to the folder and its contents, which means to alter the folder permissions to take ownership of the folder & files. Why would I want to do that? After the folder is copied to the new user, I would still need to alter the permissions for that user again anyway, which means the permissions are altered twice. Altering permissions on a directory tree is no fast operation either. This problem is also detailed here by sbalfour.

After following some links, the solution is to use the real Administrator account, which needs to be activated first using the following command line. You need to launch the Command Prompt using “run as administrator”.

net user Administrator /active

After the command completes, simply logout and login using the newly activated Administrator account and you can move the files around without being forced to take ownership of the folder & files.

I reformatted my computer yesterday and installed Windows 7. I installed 2 apps – Winamp and Mp3tag, both of which cannot accept files that have been dropped onto them. Hmmm… that’s strange.

It turns out that this is a security feature, part of UAC. Instructions on how to fix it is detailed here. In the Control Panel item “Administrative Tools”, under Local Policy, disable this item called “User Account Control: Only elevate UIaccess applications that are installed in secure locations”.

What baffles me is that “Program Files” is listed as a secure location, and so is Windows Explorer right? So why aren’t these programs with elevated access? If they are, can’t they interact with each other via drag & drop?