the boredom of ramfree17

My Windows XP installation is acting up again. For some reason I cannot pinpoint directories will change permission and it locks me out with an “Access Denied” permission. The problem is that I am logged in as a local administrator (hey, its Windows so its the only way to really work while in it ) and following the maxim “Computer Security stops with full physical access” then everything should be available to me. First reaction would be to check and modify the file security properties but since I don’t have “access” then the Security tab will not show in the properties window of the file.

Normally I would note the directory down somewhere in the desk, wait finishing my current work, and then reboot to Linux and access the files. Linux allows me to bypass the NTFS access control list so I can take out the files and move/copy them to a new location before deleting the old location. I run a chkdsk next time I boot into Windows to reset the index and have a semblance of sanity in the drive.

Today this can’t be my route as it locked a directory containing some files that I need for the current document I am working on. Rebooting to Linux to bail out Windows is not an option so I searched a way on how to circumvent this, and now I have two (well technically one with a backup).

CACLS

CACLS is the built-in command line utility for modifying file access control lists in Windows. Invoking the help file (cacls /?)presents a pretty concise and helpful help message. To give my user account full access to the misbehaving directory and all the files inside, the command is

cacls [path to directory to be change] /T /G Erin:F

where /T specifies that all contents of the directory will be modified and the last switch tells the utility to give user name Erin full access.

If the cacls command still fails for your admin user, then try using the SYSTEM user as that generally have more privileges than the administrator users. You basically need to execute the same CACLS command under that privilege but the “runas” command will not work as you will need the SYSTEM password. You will have to trick the machine into opening the doors for you [insert devil grin here]. Not really, I was talking about the Scheduler trick that is only accessible to Administrators and some special user groups.

AT HH:MM /INTERACTIVE cmd.exe

HH and MM is to be replaced with the time + one or two minutes from the current system time (use 24H format for the hours). This will trigger the task scheduler to open a command prompt at the set time which uses the SYSTEM account. You can try the cacls modification from the resulting prompt.

And if all else fails, there is always Linux.

ciao!

Tags: Non-FLOSS by Erin
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I imagine that at first the Auto-play feature is the best thing since sliced bread. I think I first encountered it when I used Win98(?) wherein if you pop in a CD with the autoplay file it will start the named executable which is usually the main installer of the disc.

Then come WinXP (or Win2K, I can’t remember) wherein some brilliant developer/designer proposed to take it one step further, by making sure an autoplay dialog pops up to display a list of possible actions whenever the user puts in a media in the CD/DVD drive OR if a USB storage device is plugged-in.

I find that feature as very irritating, especially since I am a keyboard-centric user and I have a multi-partition USB HDD enclosure. I have four partitions in my 120GB WD driver so it means every time I use it in Windows I have to contend with eight windows (4 drive scanning dialog boxes, and the actual autoplay window). Somewhere along the four autoplay window is an option to set this behavior off (Do nothing+Do this every time) but somehow it is very elusive so I end up hitting the escape key vigorously to cancel these autoplay actions. These combative behavior does not always work since sometimes the windows do not have focus.

Even for DVD and CD media, I don’t like this option even if my next action will be to open an explorer and navigate to the inserted media. I don’t like it because the pop-out windows by their nature interrupts my train of thought. I prefer that the media be read in the background and I will press WinKey+E to launch an explorer.

So last night I finally got fed up and searched for a way to turn off that irritating feature. It was very easy actually and got a lot of hits; the keywords I used were “disable autoplay windows”. In a nutshell the steps are:

1. In the run command, execute “gpedit.msc” which launches the group policy editor.
2. Navigate to the User Configuration->Administrative Templates->System item. If you want this to be system wide, use the Computer Configuration instead. My wife may want this feature so I opted for the user-limited settings.
3. Double-click on the “Turn off Autoplay” and set it to true.

Presto! No more autoplay nag boxes for me. I think KDE also have a counterpart for this in the kded(aemon) but I use XFCE so I don’t really have this problem when I am in Linux.

[update]

• For XP Home users, the option above is not readily accessible. Users will have to use the TweakUI utility that is available here
• For Vista users, here is the link mentioned in the comment section below.

ciao!

Tags: Non-FLOSS by Erin
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