Problem with permissions

I am often told that I need permission to perform a certain action (such as deleting afolder from the desktop or renaming something): usually when I continue, the action is performed. But I want to stop these notices coming up altogether. It's a pity that when Windows is installed there's no option to tell the programme that you are the owner and that bringing up a window saying you need to get permission to do whatever is as silly as it is irritating.

I have tried setting permissions for the C:\ drive as a whole but when I get to the permissions page, I can't change to full permission as the boxes are greyed out. My user account is set as administrator.. Same for say, the Program Files folder.

None of the pages I have arrived at by Googling show the eventuality of these boxes not being 'tickable'... How do I set things, for the Windows folder say, so that I can rename, edit, move folders or files etc. without being told I need permission? (I am not a Windows beginner by the way and can be trusted to make changes in these folders!).

Tried running this at a command prompt (admin level):

Code:

net user administrator /active:yes

.. thought thsat had helped. I renamed a folder in Program Files without a prompt. But when I changed it back again, the permission notice reappeared. There's no logic to this...

(My UAC is set to 'off', BTW, though not sure that's relevant to this issue?).

Thanks.

Hi, it appears you are using Win 7 - this forum is actually for Win 10. You might prefer to refer this to sevenforums.

If you set UAC off certain things will not work.
There are some things you can do to evade UAC such as creating an elevated shortcut for programs you use frequently (search the Tutorials section for UAC, or, much easier, use Winaero's free tweaker to create such shortcuts as one of its many functions).

As for the permissions prompts, these are meant to protect certain areas as you know. Of course, you could simply take ownership of everything in sight.

However if you did, and this refers to Win 10, you might expect such permissions to be reset on the next feature upgrade - I can't be definitive on that.

Dalchina is correct about the "self protect" aspect of the permissions. UAC or not, Windows has gotten stricter on what can be changed/added/deleted on the fly without intervention. Although you are the only person on the machine, that may seem silly and irritating, and at times it certainly is. But, the internal permissions protection is also intended for "drive-by" attacks and inadvertent modifications. A watch-dog, so to speak. Example.... when I modify the Hosts file to include additional BitCoin Miner entries, the system will prompt to say I need permission to write to that folder (subfolder of System32 in this case). Human intervention and approval helps keep the bad guys out.

martinlest said:

I have tried setting permissions for the C:\ drive as a whole

Make sure you have a backup ready, because once you do that, you will be reinstalling ASAP.
The reason permissions are set that way is to prevent people from tampering with system files.

The permissions you mention sound like Protected Folders, which MS introduced lately.
Enable or Disable Controlled Folder Access in Windows 10 | Windows 10 Tutorials

I use this to have an access to my desktop (it will not work, when protected folders are enabled):

Code:

takeown /s %computername% /u %username% /f "%SystemDrive%\Users\Public\Desktop" /r /d y
icacls "%SystemDrive%\Users\Public\Desktop" /grant:r %username%:(OI)(CI)F /t /l /q /c
takeown /s %computername% /u %username% /f "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop" /r /d y
icacls "%USERPROFILE%\Desktop" /grant:r %username%:(OI)(CI)F /t /l /q /c

martinlest said:

I am not 'tampering', though Windows doesn't know that of course!

The point though is I'd like to stop the 'you need permission' notices from popping up like this - I am not prevented from carrying out the various tasks when I click 'Proceed', so it's not that I am blocked from my own computer.. I just want to get rid of this pop-up window, if that's possible.

I'll have a look through the linked thread... Thanks.

Getting rid of the pop-up, is tantamount to getting rid of the question. You want it to self-answer with "OK". That is dangerous.

dalchina said:

If you set UAC off certain things will not work.

I haven't come across anything that doesn't work with UAC set to off. Could you please give an example of what doesn't work with UAC set to off? I need to test what doesn't work with UAC set to off in order to run security measures and like I mentioned, I haven't found anything that doesn't work with UAC set to off.

UAC can be turned off only via registry, setting it to Never Notify does not qualify. Store apps require UAC to be enabled, just like they need IPv6, otherwise they will be unable to spy, I mean unable to work.

TairikuOkami said:

UAC can be turned off only via registry, setting it to Never Notify does not qualify. Store apps require UAC to be enabled, just like they need IPv6, otherwise they will be unable to spy, I mean unable to work.

Thanks for the clarification. That makes sense now. Obviously there is a difference between "Never Notify" and actually turning it off via the registry.


EDIT:

I started with UAC set to highest priority and did a registry tweak.



I just tried something, and now I'm a bit confused again. I went in the registry and set the value to "0" for EnableLUA and then went into Control Panel "User Accounts" and the bar immediately reflected the registry change and of course you have to reboot for the changes to take effect permanently.




Then I tried something else to see the result. I set the UAC back to the highest priority using the Control Panel "User Accounts" method and rebooted. After the reboot, I checked the registry and the EnableLUA value was set back to "1".


So now I'm really wondering if there is a difference between "Never Notify" and actually setting the value of EnableLUA in the registry?


All my Store Apps worked in both scenarios, so I'm still a bit mystified as to what doesn't work with UAC set to "Never Notify" versus setting the value to "0" in the registry for EnableLUA.