We create save software #2

May 3, 2006 on 12:57 pm | In Computing |

Another episode of working with an XP Laptop:

My files for work had been temporarily saved in the Administrator’s profile. After I had created my user account I wanted to transfer those files to my user profile. This was a simple Ctrl+C Ctrl+V operation, but it left the user without any reading priviledges. Since I generally work with Unix flavors I sort of exspected that and wanted to check the permissions for this folder and its subfolders. The properties of the folder listed the information I needed and all was ready to be edited with a couple clicks of the mouse. However, nothing changed although I made sure to change permissions also for subfolders. For some reason I was able to change permissions to my user account for some folders but not for all.

Since this didn’t work as exspected I mounted my FAT memorystick and copied my files onto it (effectively stripping off all permissions from the files), logged out of the Administrator’s account, back into my user account, and copied everything back onto the harddisk. After this operation had succeeded I wondered if it would be possible to remove as an ordinary user a storage device that was previously mounted by an admin. You guessed correctly, it is possible.

So I am trying to work with a computer here that has cryptic ways of setting read/write priviledges forcing me to do a detour over my stick while it allows ordinary users to remove devices previously mounted by an admin. Where’s the logic behind all this?