Why are Windows initial permissions garbage?

I imagine this is a FAQ that has been answered many times , but searching could be a long process.

When I installed Vista the installation set up user Bob with Admin priviledge. Fine. That's what I want. My new WIN 7 has done the same.

But on both, and IIRC on XP before Vista, I go in with Windows Explorer, and get as far as Bob >> Documents. But then click on My Pictures or My Videos or My Music, which are the folders automatically set up, and it tells me I don't have permission to access them.

Easily fixed I know, by going in and cascading the permissions from "Bob", which I did on the earlier ones, but what is happening? It can't be normal else every Windows user in the would would have come up against it and I'm sure there would have been a stink by now.

That's not normal. A user should have permission to his own folders.

What does confuse some people is that the Administrator doesn't, by default, have access to other users folders. But this makes sense to me as it means that an Administrator can't access another user's private data without them being aware of the fact.

This is not normal and I've never ever seen an instance of that that happen either.

Could you perhaps describe in more detail exactly what you are doing? Are you performing migrations or something?

That's not normal *3. All my users, Admins & Limited, have full permission for all their own Documents folders on both XP & Vista. Also Admins have full permissions to everyone else's Documents folders.

I'm a great one for manipulating permissions, but I've never touched anyone's Documents folders, honest guv!

Contrary to what the other 3 posters say, this is completely normal.. The folders were associated with Bob on Vista and are now associated with Bob on Win 7. While the username may be the same, the userid, which is what Windows uses internally, is different. Because Bob is an Administrator, you can override the original ownership.. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way around this - I have seen it a few times in the past.

I thought Robert was talking about a new install, and new folders. But even if it's an upgrade the user's GUID should be preserved by the upgrade process. The situation that you describe only happens when you try to recreate a user ID.

In reply to a post by Spasch:

Contrary to what the other 3 posters say, this is completely normal..

No it is not. If you do an upgrade, this should not occur as the username are transferred across retaining their SID and thus permission and user accounts are the same, if you upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7, you do NOT have to go recreating permissions which were there on vista.

This can happen using 3rd party backup and restore programs which carried the file permissions across, indeed, but this is not mentioned in the original post.

Edited by Pipexer (Thu 21-Jul-11 21:21:35)

Just replying to the latest post, to clarify things, as there are several on the same track.

This is a virgin install on the Win 7 machine, just using the automatic configuration the first switch-on triggers. The only reason for mentioning the Vista machine was that I had exactly the same problem, and on re-installs.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

That's not normal *3. All my users, Admins & Limited, have full permission for all their own Documents folders on both XP & Vista. Also Admins have full permissions to everyone else's Documents folders.

I'm a great one for manipulating permissions, but I've never touched anyone's Documents folders, honest guv!

The permissions appear to be correct, but access is still denied. It's almost as though I'm not being recognised as me via one path, but accepted via another.

But - more to come, as I have found something very odd.

Hmm. What path exactly is it you are trying to open?

My Pictures, for example, should be C:\Users\BoB\Pictures assuming installed onto C (and yes before anyone says I am aware %systemdrive% could also be used).

So to clarify

-Fresh install of Windows 7 on clean drive
-Create user "Bob" during OOBE
-Log on as Bob
-Start > My Computer > Local Disk C > Users > Bob > "My Pictures" (but the path is actually "pictures")
-You get the error?

Very puzzling!

Edited by Pipexer (Thu 21-Jul-11 21:41:18)