Windows 7 Files Write Protected

johno7

New Member
Joined
Apr 1, 2009
Hello

I did try searching for help with this, but I couldnt find it.

The problem that I am having is:

I have installed Windows 7 onto a harddrive and then added the other drives from an older XP installation, I used "Takeownership" on all the drives just after they were added and all was well until recently, now the files on one of the 500gb drives report that they are "write protected" so I cannot delete or rename them and I cannot add any files to a couple of the folders on the same drive., I cannot use "Takeownership" or set user permissions on any of them as I get the same error.

The majority of these files have been added to the drive after the installation of Windows 7 (about 2 days after the RC1 was released).

Any ideas or suggestions to help with this would be gratefully recieved.

Thanks
 
Could you explain what you mean by "the other drives"

Are you using the 32-bit or 64-bit edition?

I never had to use the Take Ownership option when adding hard drives or permanently connected large USB drives.

What type of files did you copy over?

What is the exact error message you receive?

Have you selected your name from the list in the Security tab and taken Full Control?
 
Hello

Could you explain what you mean by \"the other drives\"
Windows 7 is on it's own harddrive, the other drive hat I have noticed the problem on is a different physical drive that was in my XP system.

Are you using the 32-bit or 64-bit edition?
I am using the 64bit edition

I never had to use the Take Ownership option when adding hard drives or permanently connected large USB drives.
To be honest I did this just because I didnt want to get any permission problems later

What type of files did you copy over?
The majority of the files are .avi's, but I have the same error with .exe's and .iso's

What is the exact error message you receive?
I get an error message stating the file/s is write protected, I also get the same message when trying to change the permissions.

Have you selected your name from the list in the Security tab and taken Full Control?
I have tried setting the permissions for either adminstrator or my user name, the options are currently greyed out and it is not possible to change anything.

I have noticed this thread http://windows7forums.com/windows-7-support/2968-write-protection.html which seems to be similar to what is occuring on my system.

****

The files are now accessable but I have not changed anything, I shall screenshot the error next time I get it,

Thank You
 
I am having the same problem. Here's a screenshot of me trying to copy and paste a file on my 500GB WD external. Note that the file is already on the drive.

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-8/320476/Untitled.jpg

The problem seems to be somewhat random with me as well. The drives I am using were all formatted by XP 32 Pro. I am running 7 64 Ultimate. It only seem to be this drive that has the problem.

If I go in and tell Windows to give all users full control, it tells me all of the media is write protected as it tries to set the permissions file by file:

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-8/320476/Untitled1.jpg

I have the same issue running as admin.

Any help would be swell. Thanks.
 
Still have same error

Hi

Well this error keeps occuring and I have tried all the things suggested but nothing works.

Take Ownership now reports that files are write protected and prompts for each file to continue/skip/retry etc.

The most annoying thing about this is that it is intermittent.

The reason I noticed it is that I copied my world of warcraft game folder there and curse client fails to update due to the write protect, again this is not 100% of the time, it went for 5 or 6 days with no problems and suddenly the files are all write protected.

I think I might just copy the files off the drive, reformat and starts afresh.

Thanks
 
Error Still Occurs

Hi

Well I can now confirm that this error has nothing to do with the drive/s being created by another OS.

I installed a new 1TB drive and partitioned/formatted it, and have been transferring files recovered from the corrupted external drive for several hours.

Today I turned my pc on and went to transfer some more files and got the "write protect" error !

Fortunately a disc check seems to cure the problem, but the erratic nature of this problem is becoming quite frustrating.
 
First,,,, never run TakeOwnership just to try and save yourself from expected/unexpected problems. That is not the intent of TakeOwnership.

transferring files recovered from the corrupted external drive

If the drive has corrupted data on it,, then this is probably what is causing the problem. Corruption can come in many forms,,, not just data corruption, but ACL (Access Control List - or layman terms - The security Tab) corruption as well.

If there is some corruption going on,,, either caused by bad OS install,, faulty RAM, Mobo, HDD, or PSU (yes they can) it may be possible to run chkdsk to fix the problem.... however,,, running chkdsk on a faulty HDD can cause more problems, or complete failure altogether.

You should try to recover your data if possible,,, and then run Manufacturer HDD Diags to be sure before doing anything else.

When burning the Windows 7 Disk,,, you should burn it at the slowest speed possible. Otherwise,, OS corruption could result.
 
Hi

Thanks for the reply.

The recovered data is on drives prepared with XP on another system, the data was recovered using getdataback on an xp pc and all the data has been veryfied.

The corruption is not really related to the problem that I am having it just happened to occur at the same time as the write protect problem.

All the hardware is known to be good, windows 7 RC1 dvd was burned at 2x.

First,,,, never run TakeOwnership just to try and save yourself from expected/unexpected problems. That is not the intent of TakeOwnership.

This was done ages ago and not with the new 1TB drive or any of the data being transferred to it. (and was more out of frustration than anything, and has not been done since)

My point in replying was to let others know that for me the above fixes have as yet not worked.

My next plan is to re-install rc1, to be honest I cannot remember if this is a clean install of rc1 or just the beta that has upgraded over time.

As I stated the fault is erratic and so makes diagnosing the cause/s very awkward.

Thanks
 
Hi

This morning I went to transfer some files to the new 1TB drive and got the write protect message again.

So I checked using diskapart as per this T3CHWORKS Windows7 Info and here is the result

35bgzmq.jpg

As you can clearly see there is NO write protection on the disk or volume and yet I still get the same message, I am unable to run a disk check because it reports the same error.

After a restart I was able to do a error check with diskscan but it still wont write any files.

I am cuurrently running system file check as suggested and shall report the outcome here.

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Hi

2009-10-14 09:41:23, Info CSI 000002d4 [SR] Beginning Verify and Repair transaction
2009-10-14 09:42:02, Info CSI 000002d5 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:52{26}]"Microsoft.Build.Engine.dll" of NetFx-Microsoft.Build.Engine, Version = 6.1.7100.0, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (9), Culture neutral, VersionScope neutral, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:b03f5f7f11d50a3a}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch
2009-10-14 09:42:32, Info CSI 000002d6 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:52{26}]"Microsoft.Build.Engine.dll" of NetFx-Microsoft.Build.Engine, Version = 6.1.7100.0, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (9), Culture neutral, VersionScope neutral, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:b03f5f7f11d50a3a}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch
2009-10-14 09:42:32, Info CSI 000002d7 [SR] This component was referenced by [l:194{97}]"Microsoft-Windows-Foundation-Package~31bf3856ad364e35~amd64~~6.1.7100.0.WindowsFoundationDelivery"
2009-10-14 09:43:02, Info CSI 000002d8 [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:102{51}]"\??\C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727"\[l:52{26}]"Microsoft.Build.Engine.dll"; source file in store is also corrupted
2009-10-14 09:43:02, Info CSI 000002da [SR] Repair complete
2009-10-14 09:43:02, Info CSI 000002db [SR] Committing transaction
2009-10-14 09:43:02, Info CSI 000002df [SR] Verify and Repair Transaction completed. All files and registry keys listed in this transaction have been successfully repaired
After a reboot I can now write files to the drive, so not sure what it's fixed but it seems to of helped.

I shall keep you updated to any further developments.

As I am running Intel cpu the
PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64
bit seems irrelevant anyway.

Thanks
 
Last edited:
Hi

After a reboot I can now write files to the drive, so not sure what it's fixed but it seems to of helped.

I shall keep you updated to any further developments.

As I am running Intel cpu the bit seems irrelevant anyway.

Thanks
I noticed the last entry said everything was repaired. I hope that takes care of it.

I don't know exactly why they refer to 64 bit files as AMD64 unless it's because AMD made the first 64 bit processors. When you get Ubuntu linux they call that AMD64 too. It's just a name.
 
Hi

Bad news is it's still not fixed, I restarted the pc to allow windows updates and the new 1tb drive was write protected again although a quick chkdisk fixed it.

So guessing Im just going to have to live with it until I install the new motherboard later this week.

:eek:
 
Well,, this could be a bad USB on the board, or bad board,,, but it could also be a problem with the drive or the USB controller on the external drive.

If you haven't already,,, I would run HDD diags on that drive,, you can try either Seagate Seatools or Western Digital WDDiags for most drives
 
Well,, this could be a bad USB on the board, or bad board,,, but it could also be a problem with the drive or the USB controller on the external drive.

If you haven't already,,, I would run HDD diags on that drive,, you can try either Seagate Seatools or Western Digital WDDiags for most drives

It's a brand new drive connected internally via SATA and I have tested it with Seatools and Spinrite and there are no errors, but what may not be so obvious is that this happens on more than just the new 1TB drive or my external usb 1TB drive it has also happened on a 300GB, a 500GB and a 750GB.

Like I said before all the hardware is known to be good and the error is something to do with windows itself because as the images above show it sees that there is no write protection with the attributes and yet it still says the drive/s are write protected.

Last night it asked that the drive be unmounted before it would do a chkdisk, this is the first time it has done that before it has either just done the test or stated that it was unable to do so due to the protection.

By the way I followed the link on the advert here to Uniblue Registry Booster, thats about as much use as a chocolate teapot in that it will only fix errors once you buy it :razz: And I never buy anything unless I know it to be exactly what I want/need and a quick scan that says I have errors but then does nothing about them doesnt prove anything to me other than it allegedly found some errors.

;)
 
Well,, first off,, Registry Cleaners, boosters, whatever, Free or Not. Can all potentially do damage

Studies have also shown that, unless you are actually having a problem with the registry, they do nothing to really significantly (or not), speed up the system.

For the most part, they are all garbage.

The Write Protect has to be a problem with a driver or controller, or something, I really do not think it is specifically OS related. I have 5 external drives (Seagate, Maxtor and Western Digital), 4 internal drives (Seagate) and I have never experienced this problem. Not to mention a number of USB thumb drives.
 
Hi

New to the site but just wanted to let you know you're not alone, I'm also having this exact problem.

I recently installed 7 x64 Professional RTM and plugged in my Thermaltake external SATA enclosure. Sure enough when I popped in one of my drives and tried to access it, I can see everything fine but I cannot do anything because everything is 'write protected'.

I can't change any attributes and I'm logged in as an administrator. The HD is fine and has no errors on it. I installed my motherboard's (Abit IX38) JMicron eSATA drivers and they seemed to install fine.

This looks to be a problem with windows 7.
 
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