How to get full write permission on my second drive after dual boot?

4

I had a WinXP installation on my hard drive. Then I bought a 2nd drive and installed Win7. Dual boot working fine. But when I'm in the Win7 environment, it appears that I don't have full admin permission on the "D" drive (that's the drive with WinXP). Even though the user I'm logged in as has admin permissions, I have to run my apps with administrator privileges in order to get write access to the D drive. This is not the case when I do stuff on the C drive.

I could just get into running those apps that access the D drive in admin mode, but that seems like overkill. Is there some secret switch I can flip so that my D drive acts like my C drive, security-wise?

Shaul Behr

Posted 2010-10-18T10:55:41.717

Reputation: 1 437

Answers

1

Your Win7 user is probably just not added to the WinXP disk's ACLs. (I assume each OS has it's own users, and is not attached to an outside domain).
Running with admin privs (in Win7), simply add your user to the ACL on D, and have it propagate to sub-folders and files.
Note that when you're back in XP, if you look at the ACLs, you'll see an ACE there for an unrecognized user, don't worry - its just that XP cannot resolve the SID to an actual user, since it doesnt really know about the Win7.

Not so secret... :)

AviD

Posted 2010-10-18T10:55:41.717

Reputation: 481

1FWIW, the reason is the Ownership... You need to change the owner to some administrator in the Windows you are currently in, then add Everyone to the ACL with r + x + list + modify, propagating each fully... Then boot the other windows and allow it to reclaim ownership – Milind R – 2014-08-30T15:48:37.920

Hey, @AviD, nice to see you here! Pardon my ignorance - I'm more a software guy than hardware - how exactly do you add a user to the ACL? If you're talking about right-clicking "Properties" on the D drive and selecting "Security" - my "Administrators" group (of which my user is a member) already has full access to the drive. Is there somewhere else to setup the ACL? – Shaul Behr – 2010-11-14T13:38:37.433

1you too :). No, that's exactly what I was referring too (though you know thats NOT hardware, RIGHT? ;) ). The problem is that on Win7, unless you elevate to Admin, you're not IN the Administrators group! Therefore, try adding either your user directly, the Users group, or Interactive Users (or some other non-admin group) and make sure you have the correct rights, and that they propogate to the subfolders. – AviD – 2010-11-14T14:08:41.267

Curiouser and curiouser... I tried adding the user to "D" drive with full control rights, and it started going through the D drive, directory by directory, telling me "Access denied"! Something tells me I need to run the "Properties" box with admin rights! Any idea how to do that? – Shaul Behr – 2010-11-14T14:50:06.323

Yup, is as I said "Running with admin privs...". Point is, you're not really an admin at this point. If you rightclick Windows Explorer, you can select "Run as Administrator". Everything spawned from that is then started with the elevated token. – AviD – 2010-11-14T15:07:02.443

Nah, that still doesn't work... same behavior as if explorer was running as regular user... "Access denied" on everything. – Shaul Behr – 2010-11-14T17:19:00.840

Update: it seems that explorer allows me to set permissions on individual folders on the D drive, but not the entire drive itself. Any idea why that would be? – Shaul Behr – 2010-11-14T17:22:38.983

Hmm... no, not really. Maybe the ACLs are messed up, since the were created in XP? (the permissions mechanisms were greatly changed between XP and Win7)... Though if it's still not working, you can try taking ownership, though that would probably mess up the XP later. – AviD – 2010-11-14T17:59:50.517

1

You need to take ownership, i recommend you to do it with this command line tool microsoft provides http://support.microsoft.com/kb/825751 Follow the instructions there and use this command to get full access and ownership

XCACLS.vbs z:\ /g user:f /T

Replace z with your hard drive's letter and user with your user name

Guillermo Siliceo Trueba

Posted 2010-10-18T10:55:41.717

Reputation: 846

From the page you linked: "Xcacls.vbs is only compatible with Microsoft Windows 2000, with Microsoft Windows XP, and with Microsoft Windows Server 2003. Xcacls.vbs is not supported by Microsoft." I'm using Windows 7... – Shaul Behr – 2011-02-01T17:03:50.673

Asked: 2010-10-18T10:55:41.717

Viewed: 5 493 times

Active: 2012-01-19T07:38:10.830