Today, I cannot delete or rename files. Excel cannot save a modified
spreadsheet, claiming it is read-only; but the read-only checkbox on the
file properties window is NOT checked. Attempts to rename a file fail
because only an administrator can do that. I cannot even paste files I
created into folders I created. This seems to affect only one hard drive.

--
David E. Ross
"A Message to Those Who Are Not Vaccinated"
See my <http://www.rossde.com/index.html#vaccine>.

On Tue, 16 Nov 2021 14:46:09 -0800, David E. Ross wrote:
> Today, I cannot delete or rename files. Excel cannot save a modified
> spreadsheet, claiming it is read-only; but the read-only checkbox on the
> file properties window is NOT checked. Attempts to rename a file fail
> because only an administrator can do that. I cannot even paste files I
> created into folders I created. This seems to affect only one hard drive.

Most common cause is that the file is being opened with exclusive access
(which disallow any access from other processes). If this the case, use
Process Explorer to close the handle of the opened file. Since third party
security softwares can also caused this, it's best to reconfigure it to
unlock the file rather than using Process Explorer to close the file handle.

Least common cause is that the file permission is messed up somehow. This
should be fixable by making sure that it has the permissions which are
inherited from its parent folder, and doesn't have any non inherited
permissions. If changing the permissions fails, take its ownership then try
again.

An unlikely case is that there's file system integrity problem which should
be fixable using CHKDSK /F.

On 11/16/2021 5:46 PM, David E. Ross wrote:
> Today, I cannot delete or rename files. Excel cannot save a modified
> spreadsheet, claiming it is read-only; but the read-only checkbox on the
> file properties window is NOT checked. Attempts to rename a file fail
> because only an administrator can do that. I cannot even paste files I
> created into folders I created. This seems to affect only one hard drive.
>

Start : Run : cmd.exe

Then run:

whoami

whoami /user /priv

to gather information about whether the folder you are
trying to enter or update, matches your current profile.
You might be using a different account.

You can do Properties on any file or folder, then
use the Security tab, and review ownership.

No, the Read-only bit in File Explorer, that thing
is not what you think it is. It doesn't control anything.
But the Security tab could show the more important details.

You might not be elevated and thus not able to
use the Windows magical "implicit TakeOwn" of the
folder.

But a more likely answer, is something diabolical
has happened :-( Such as a storage device that has
gone read=only. Obviously, OSes like the Windows flavor,
do not deal well with system areas having gone
read-only, no place to store logs, no place to
store Registry changes. Windows absolutely hates
read only, when applied to its working facilities.
Other OSes might survive a read-only session.
Windows on the other hand, could tip over on you,
just like that.

As a result, I have to wonder what percentage of the
device is read-only or is not owned by you.

Part of the problem could be explained by your
"limited-user" account which does not belong to
the Administrator group. A long list of "/priv"
implies administrator group. But you can use the
Accounts control panel, to review who does what
on your machine.

Certain brands of SSD, go Read-Only at end of life.
SCSI drives used to have a Write-Protect switch
on the dip switch bank or back pin block. There are
likely other corner cases of that nature. But that is
too easy of an explanation. I'm sure it's something
diabolical.

*******

We used to have a lot of trouble at work, with
un-saveable shit. We were using Win2K at the time
(likely because the Boss got a deal on it). I think
our IT guy (a heroic individual), knew of the
problem, but didn't have a fix. One guy maintained
the entire organization, a family guy with four
kids, and he used to go home at night at 10PM.
He had *a lot* on his plate. We never did get
a fix for that.

One thing we had at work, is the worlds most
fancy backup system. An "online" backup system.
You could not lose a file. If you clicked
"Empty Trash", you could enter the backup
system (only your own homedir would show),
dial back the Epoch ten minutes, and there
would be your file, sitting there for you to
copy. About as good as Windows File History,
only with a better interface. It was possibly
that backup thingy, that was making files
un-saveable. That was my working theory at the time,
that it was interfering somehow.

Paul

On 11/16/2021 2:46 PM, David E. Ross wrote:
> Today, I cannot delete or rename files. Excel cannot save a modified
> spreadsheet, claiming it is read-only; but the read-only checkbox on the
> file properties window is NOT checked. Attempts to rename a file fail
> because only an administrator can do that. I cannot even paste files I
> created into folders I created. This seems to affect only one hard drive.
>

The problem seems to affect part of my D-drive (a spinner) and part of
my desktop.

If I go to a backup and attempt to copy a read-write .xlsx spreadsheet
onto my desktop, I get "Access denied". If I open that file in Excel,
the title bar does NOT say "Read Only". However, I can use Excel to
save that file on my desktop. If I then open the copy on my desktop in
Excel, the title bar says "Read Only". If I then copy that supposedly
read-only .xlsx file to my C-drive and open that copy in Excel, the
title bar does NOT say "Read Only".

When I look at the properties of an affected file and select the
Security tab, I can see that "Everyone" has "Full control".

--
David E. Ross
"A Message to Those Who Are Not Vaccinated"
See my <http://www.rossde.com/index.html#vaccine>.

On 11/17/2021 1:01 AM, David E. Ross wrote:
> On 11/16/2021 2:46 PM, David E. Ross wrote:
>> Today, I cannot delete or rename files. Excel cannot save a modified
>> spreadsheet, claiming it is read-only; but the read-only checkbox on the
>> file properties window is NOT checked. Attempts to rename a file fail
>> because only an administrator can do that. I cannot even paste files I
>> created into folders I created. This seems to affect only one hard drive.
>>
>
> The problem seems to affect part of my D-drive (a spinner) and part of
> my desktop.
>
> If I go to a backup and attempt to copy a read-write .xlsx spreadsheet
> onto my desktop, I get "Access denied". If I open that file in Excel,
> the title bar does NOT say "Read Only". However, I can use Excel to
> save that file on my desktop. If I then open the copy on my desktop in
> Excel, the title bar says "Read Only". If I then copy that supposedly
> read-only .xlsx file to my C-drive and open that copy in Excel, the
> title bar does NOT say "Read Only".
>
> When I look at the properties of an affected file and select the
> Security tab, I can see that "Everyone" has "Full control".
>

By turning on "Hidden Files" on every folder on my
system, I can keep track of the hidden stuff.

My desktop is littered with shortcuts to programs,
and only two items are "real files". I see two
"desktop.ini" files, and doing properties on them
reveals they are stored in these two folders.
These two folders (combined together), represent
all the items on the desktop.

C:\Users\Public\Desktop
C:\Users\User Name\Desktop <=== copied files go here ???

If you navigate to C:\Users\User Name, what
are the permissions on the "Desktop" folder ?
Here are the permissions I know about, on a C: drive.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/WzPtSNhL/permissions-of-my-desktop-folder.gif

*******

Is the file blocked ? This may not show in Win7 and
Win8 SmartScreen will nag about these. Downloaded files
are tagged with an Alternate Stream at the file system
level, as a marking scheme.

https://www.sevenforums.com/attachments/tutorials/113484d1486579607t-open-file-security-warning-unblock-file-step2.jpg

*******

Let's work an example.

If I download this in Seamonkey, it doesn't attach the alternate stream.
Whereas Firefox does attach the alternate stream. The below sequence
was done with Firefox to import a "foreign, dangerous" xlsx.

https://download.microsoft.com/download/e/9/c/e9c0fc40-b5ed-4da7-8cce-3e1b5de51932/Windows10andWindowsServer2019PolicySettings--2004.xlsx

Fetch a tool.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/streams

streams Windows10andWindowsServer2019PolicySettings--2004.xlsx

C:\Users\Bolt Upright\Downloads\Windows10andWindowsServer2019PolicySettings--2004.xlsx:
:Zone.Identifier:$DATA 173 <=== BLOCKER IS SET, called Zone Identifier

And finally, I get it to show in Properties. We have an example now.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/RVvZJgWg/blocker-is-set.gif

Now, let us use Handle, and see how many handles are open
on it. I will open in LibreOffice Calc, then check handle
and "see who has it open". I see this was updated in 2019,
when I thought it had not been touched in years.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/handle

handle64 Windows10andWindowsServer2019PolicySettings--2004.xlsx

Nthandle v4.22 - Handle viewer
Copyright (C) 1997-2019 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

soffice.bin pid: 3264 type: File
468: C:\Users\Bolt Upright\Downloads\Windows10andWindowsServer2019PolicySettings--2004.xlsx

That means, only one program has the file open at the moment.

While it would be fun to check for an Exclusive lock
or a Shared lock (or an advisory lock), just the handle
should be enough. Maybe you can't have locks without
a handle ? Dunno.

LibreOffice Calc, just for the record, creates a file of
that filename, but with the word "lock" added to the
filename. Presumably this is their idea of a cross-platform
lock method. Excel will likely do something more platform-specific.

Paul

On 11/17/2021 9:50 AM, Paul wrote [in part]:
> On 11/17/2021 1:01 AM, David E. Ross wrote:
>> On 11/16/2021 2:46 PM, David E. Ross wrote:
>>> Today, I cannot delete or rename files. Excel cannot save a modified
>>> spreadsheet, claiming it is read-only; but the read-only checkbox on the
>>> file properties window is NOT checked. Attempts to rename a file fail
>>> because only an administrator can do that. I cannot even paste files I
>>> created into folders I created. This seems to affect only one hard drive.
>>>
>>
>> The problem seems to affect part of my D-drive (a spinner) and part of
>> my desktop.
>>
>> If I go to a backup and attempt to copy a read-write .xlsx spreadsheet
>> onto my desktop, I get "Access denied". If I open that file in Excel,
>> the title bar does NOT say "Read Only". However, I can use Excel to
>> save that file on my desktop. If I then open the copy on my desktop in
>> Excel, the title bar says "Read Only". If I then copy that supposedly
>> read-only .xlsx file to my C-drive and open that copy in Excel, the
>> title bar does NOT say "Read Only".
>>
>> When I look at the properties of an affected file and select the
>> Security tab, I can see that "Everyone" has "Full control".
>>
>
> By turning on "Hidden Files" on every folder on my
> system, I can keep track of the hidden stuff.
>
> My desktop is littered with shortcuts to programs,
> and only two items are "real files". I see two
> "desktop.ini" files, and doing properties on them
> reveals they are stored in these two folders.
> These two folders (combined together), represent
> all the items on the desktop.
>
> C:\Users\Public\Desktop
> C:\Users\User Name\Desktop <=== copied files go here ???
>
> If you navigate to C:\Users\User Name, what
> are the permissions on the "Desktop" folder ?
> Here are the permissions I know about, on a C: drive.
>
[snipped]

The portion above from your reply did it! Not only did Desktop have a
faint checkmark in the read-only checkbox, but so did several other
folders in C:\Users\xxx\, where "xxx" is my user name. Actually, the
folder C:\Users\xxx itself had that checkmark. I removed the
checkmarks, and everything seems okay now. Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you.

--
David E. Ross
"A Message to Those Who Are Not Vaccinated"
See my <http://www.rossde.com/index.html#vaccine>.

On 11/17/2021 7:29 PM, David E. Ross wrote:
> On 11/17/2021 9:50 AM, Paul wrote [in part]:
>> On 11/17/2021 1:01 AM, David E. Ross wrote:
>>> On 11/16/2021 2:46 PM, David E. Ross wrote:
>>>> Today, I cannot delete or rename files. Excel cannot save a modified
>>>> spreadsheet, claiming it is read-only; but the read-only checkbox on the
>>>> file properties window is NOT checked. Attempts to rename a file fail
>>>> because only an administrator can do that. I cannot even paste files I
>>>> created into folders I created. This seems to affect only one hard drive.
>>>>
>>>
>>> The problem seems to affect part of my D-drive (a spinner) and part of
>>> my desktop.
>>>
>>> If I go to a backup and attempt to copy a read-write .xlsx spreadsheet
>>> onto my desktop, I get "Access denied". If I open that file in Excel,
>>> the title bar does NOT say "Read Only". However, I can use Excel to
>>> save that file on my desktop. If I then open the copy on my desktop in
>>> Excel, the title bar says "Read Only". If I then copy that supposedly
>>> read-only .xlsx file to my C-drive and open that copy in Excel, the
>>> title bar does NOT say "Read Only".
>>>
>>> When I look at the properties of an affected file and select the
>>> Security tab, I can see that "Everyone" has "Full control".
>>>
>>
>> By turning on "Hidden Files" on every folder on my
>> system, I can keep track of the hidden stuff.
>>
>> My desktop is littered with shortcuts to programs,
>> and only two items are "real files". I see two
>> "desktop.ini" files, and doing properties on them
>> reveals they are stored in these two folders.
>> These two folders (combined together), represent
>> all the items on the desktop.
>>
>> C:\Users\Public\Desktop
>> C:\Users\User Name\Desktop <=== copied files go here ???
>>
>> If you navigate to C:\Users\User Name, what
>> are the permissions on the "Desktop" folder ?
>> Here are the permissions I know about, on a C: drive.
>>
> [snipped]
>
> The portion above from your reply did it! Not only did Desktop have a
> faint checkmark in the read-only checkbox, but so did several other
> folders in C:\Users\xxx\, where "xxx" is my user name. Actually, the
> folder C:\Users\xxx itself had that checkmark. I removed the
> checkmarks, and everything seems okay now. Thank you. Thank you.
> Thank you.
>

The problem occurred again when I updated AVG Antivirus Free to the
latest version. This time, it was caused by an AVG setting for strict
protection against ransomeware. Changing that setting to smart
protection corrected the problem.

--
David E. Ross
"A Message to Those Who Are Not Vaccinated"
See my <http://www.rossde.com/index.html#vaccine>.