Do I Have Permission(s)?

I have a general question about permissions.

About a week ago, a tech support guy from Symantec was helping me troubleshoot why we couldn't delete my previous version of Antivirus and install a new one. During this process, he had me change all the permissions on my drive. But right in the middle of this process -- and you had to know this was coming! -- he (accidentally?) disconnected me and never called back. I never could get a hold of them again.

So there I was -- stuck in the middle of major changes to my permissions but with no idea of the purpose behind those changes.

Well, I used system restore to try to get my permissions back to the way they were before this guy "helped" me.

My question is, Does system restore in fact return permissions to the way they were, just as it returns the registry to the way it was before?

 

Hi dkline,

Do you remember what dialog boxes you were in?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/304040/ How to configure file sharing in Windows XP

Was this the process you went thru referred to in the MS doc?

If it was, that is stored in the registry.

Regards - Charles

 

This is really weird, Charles.

The document you cite doesn't deal with the permissions I'm walking about, but this one does:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/filesharing.mspx

But what's weird is, I can't seem to get back to the menus and dialog boxes shown in the screen shots on this document. I click a folder, click "properties," but all I get is a dialog box with General, Sharing and Customize tabs -- not the ones shown in screen shot Figure 1 or 2 in the document.

But I do remember the Symantec guy getting me to the dialog boxes shown in the document, so clearly I was there and that's what I'm referring to.

Do you know what's going on here?

 

Open any folder and click view>folder options and then click the view tab. Uncheck the line that says use simple file sharing.

 

OOPS, I see that's probably not what you're after. I'm not really sure though. You can have a look and see how yours is set though.

 

dkline

Do you have XP Pro?

Do you have "simple file and print sharing" un-checked?

If so you should have a "security tab" in folder properties. If no tab, it could be turned off in group policy or turned off in the registry. ie: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]
"NoSecurityTab "=dword:00000001

I can make my security tab appear or disappear with the check mark in "simple file and print sharing "

Edit: Start>Run> type "Gpedit.msc ". Go to User Config>Admin Templates>Windows Components>highlight Windows Explorer and dbl click remove security tab. That should be not configured or disabled for you security tab to show.

 

Okay, I finally got it (thanks to a reference in Microsoft's knowledgebase).

The permissions I'm talking about are in the registry. Open regedit and right click on any of the 5 major key groups. You'll see "permissions" as one of the menu options.

So, am I safe in assuming that since the changes the tech support guy made were in the permissions portion of the registry itself, that simply restoring the registry to the state it was in before he futzed around with it will erase any changes he made?

 

Hi dkline,

Sure, I think that's a safe bet

Regards - Charles

 

Thanks. That's what I figured, but I wanted to make sure.

 

Hi dkline,

Your post about reg permissions reminded me of a glitch I had when installing SP2 way back when.

When the SP2 install was trying to backup the registry, I got a message that it didn't have permission I forgot whether there was some indication of where in the registry it got hungup or not, but I figured out that it was the Java permissions in the Registry and I had to do what the Symantec tech apparently had you do.

Regards - Charles