XP file permissions problem

Padraig Mor

I have a problem. It's driving me mad! We have a piece of equipment at work attached to an XP machine. When the equipment software runs, it reads the equipment settings from a plain text file (call it settings.txt). Various idiots here have been editing the file without a clue of what they were doing. To stop this, I went into the file properties, clicked 'security' and modified the permissions to stop people making changes to the file. However, being a bit of an idiot myself, I also managed to lock the file out from even being opened. Now, the equipment won't run at all because it can't open the bloody file! However, when I try and re-change the permissions, I am not allowed; in fact it won't even let me view the current permissions. Logged in as admin.

Is there a quick and easy way to sort this??? Cheers!


Should point out - and I'm definitely not 100% on this - that the equipment vendor MAY have some sort of 'ghost operating system' (their technician has previously referred to this) installed on the PC to prevent the software being installed onto another machine. This may or may not have something to do with the problem.

FSL

Just contact the software vendor, and at the same time ask them how to prevent non authorised users from amending the file.

EL_Loco

once upon a time I had similar issues, don't have a direct fix but maybe with the command line stuff you'd knock the file into some sort of shape for editing again:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/318754

Padraig Mor

FSL wrote: »

Just contact the software vendor, and at the same time ask them how to prevent non authorised users from amending the file.

The equipment vendor (who also do the software) won't talk to us as we no longer have a maintenance contract and either want us to spend 20 grand on a new contract or pay to get an engineer over from the UK to 'fix' this problem, which I'm guessing can be sorted in about 10 seconds!

Capt'n Midnight

you probably just need to take ownership of the file and then you can reset permissions

don't forget to make copies of it, actually imaging the drive with ghost or clonezilla might not be a bad idea either

Padraig Mor

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

you probably just need to take ownership of the file and then you can reset permissions

don't forget to make copies of it, actually imaging the drive with ghost or clonezilla might not be a bad idea either

Can't copy it either! :mad: Not sure what you mean by ownership - I'm logged in as admin so should be all powerful no?:D

Capt'n Midnight

Padraig Mor wrote: »

Can't copy it either! :mad: Not sure what you mean by ownership - I'm logged in as admin so should be all powerful no?:D

it's one of the options in security when you right click on the file ,

unlikely = if the file is pale green then it may have been encrypted

Nonmonotonic

Bit of lateral thinking. Can you use System Restore to revert to earlier restore point?

Padraig Mor

Restore not switched on AFAIK - something to do with the anti copy software apparently running I think. Anyway, got sorted in the end with some more lateral thinking. Turns out the data files produced by the machine include a copy of most of the text of the settings file. So I reconstructed a new version of the file and gave it the name the software expects (as, bizarrely, I was able to rename the original file to something else).

Nonmonotonic

Good to see the anti copy software is working! Well done on the solution.