Locked files

[bill.blogs]

Hi everyone,
Before switching over to W10 permanently (I currently use Windows 7) I wanted to try it out and use it for all purposes except for email. I have W7 installed on an SSD which is in a swappable caddy. My Documents, Music and Videos folders are on a separate standard hard drive (Drive E). I installed W10 on a new separate SSD and pointed W10 to the E drive for Documents, Music etc. When I want to experiment and find my way round W10, I just substitute the W7 SSD in the caddy for the W10 SSD.

Everything seems to be working fine apart from one problem. In W7 I can open every single file on drive E though for a reason I don't know, a lock has appeared on some of those files. I have no idea whether W7 or W10 created these locks. Those files on drive E with the lock sign on them will not open in W10.

1. Does anyone know what is causing some files to get locked and
2. Can anyone tell me how to solve the problem?

Obviously I want to be able to access all files on drive E from both OS's. Thanks

Bill.Blogs

 

[Trouble]

The operating system knows that certain files and or folders were created by a particular user.
Those have an ACL (access control list) associated with them indicating the GUID (globally unique identifier).
The other operating system has no idea who that user is and cannot resolve the GUID associated with the folders because no such user exists on the other operating system.
You would have to explicitly grant the other user on the other operating system permission(s) to access those folders and child objects (sub-folders and files).
Assuming they are exclusively "your" files and folders it shouldn't do any harm although if they are profile folders (docs, music, pictures, etc.,) you would want to be very cautious about doing anything extreme like taking ownership or disabling inheritance.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/17117/remove-the-lock-icon-from-a-folder-in-windows-7/

You might be better off copying the contents of the folders into their respective containers on your Windows 10 installation to further your experimentation.

 

[Saltgrass]

Trouble is probably correct in the explanation. The link seems to mention the locks may look strange but may actually verify the files are not being shared. I have to think some update to Windows 7 has started causing this since all of my Windows 7 systems seem to show them.

I also have files like the ones below, with might be related to supplying the information Trouble refers to for a Windows 10 system, but I am just guessing.

 

[bill.blogs]

To Trouble
Hi, Thanks. You are clearly more knowledgable than I am but I think I understand the gist of what you are saying. I have found what may be a solution but I would like to know if you consider it at all risky. I am the only user on this PC
As I said in my initial post W7 opens all files in any folder on the E drive without difficulty. I have managed to get W10 to open all files using the following proceedure:-
1. Right click any file it won't open and select Properties
2. Select the Security tab and click on Advanced
3. Click on Change Permissions and enable inheritance

That seems to work but it remains to be seen if it is a permanent solution ot if the problem re-occurs. Thaks for your help; much appreciated

Bill

 

[Trouble]

Wow..... "enable inheritance"? That would seem to suggest that the Windows 10 user (GUID) has NTFS (security tab) permissions at the root of the parent container, which I assume is the physical drive / partition.
Nope..... not at all risky, I've just never seen it work exactly that way before. Generally it involves a lot of mucking about with the parent container, explicitly adding the user name, granting permissions and cascading those permissions down to sub folders and files.

 

[bill.blogs]

Thanks Trouble. I'll come back in a couple of days and mark the tread solved if no more files get locked randomly.

 

[clifford_cooley]

Curious why I don't have these issues. I've run into ownership issues (which was resolved by Take Ownership) but never with my own files.