The real answer?
“We once gave you commoners this power and you used it to fuck your computer up and then blamed us for it, so we learned you can’t be trusted with this power. We hid it behind a kind of skill test, and you’re failing that test.”
Good luck with opening the subdirectories of
C:\WindowsApps\. I ran Explorer as admin, gave myself R/W permissions, even recursively changed ownership of everything, followed all the online guides… Still denied access.If you make a bootable linux usb drive you can do whatever you want with all windows stupid files without even having to install linux.
@ChaoticNeutralCzech
Tried knoppix?
@Reddfugee42 @programmerhumorThose’re probably containerised.
Sandboxed rather than containerised I think.
U can use proccess hacker to lauch for example total commander with SYSTEM privileges it’s highest possible privilege in windows.
Why can’t I delete System32? It’s taking up space.
Where are the other 31 systems??
I prefer the answer of giving the giy the reins and letting him get it so riddled with viruses then when he calls for support replying “sorry, your property your problem. You have absolute dominion over it and thus we give no warranty as we have no responsibility.”
Microsoft gives no warranty and assumes no responsibility as it is.
Andrew is not very smart. Windows isn’t very good, but he is very clueless. There are legitimate things to complain about, but Andrew just complains.
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Windows permissions can be tricky… I’ll give them that. A lot of the tools Microsoft provides are not very straightforward.
However, PowerShell and tools from Sysinternals suite, or open source tools as well, make it a lot easier.
Managing permissions on Linux, especially if doing the ACL thing, can be complicated too. I’ve really never ran into many permission issues myself. psexec has been helpful too when needing to access things as the SYSTEM user and not get those stupid prompts asking me to change permissions for protected folders.
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Omg, it’s an inside-joke at our company now.
Anytime something happens on a server that’s been running great for years, like a hard drive going bad or the time one literally caught on fire…
98% of the time it is selinux that is the reason it is doing weird things after the main fix because selinux changed a setting on the reboot.
“Have you checked selinux?” is the go to question whenever anything breaks now, even if it’s not a computer.
We tend to forget about it these days, but the Unix permissions model was criticized for decades for being overly simplistic. One user having absolute authority, with limited ways to delegate specific authority to other users, is not a good model for multi-user operating systems. At least not in environments with more than a few users.
A well-configured sudo or SELinux can overcome this, which is one reason we don’t bring it up much anymore. We also changed the whole model, where most people have individual PCs, and developers are often in their own little VM environment on a larger server.
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I think Andrew might be a lawyer.
My roommate for a couple years in college was pre-law, and did some internships after graduation but before gaining his own law degree. He mentioned at one point how absolutely and hilariously pervasive it was at the firm he was working for attorneys to just run screaming to IT every single time literally anything was even the slightest bit inconvenient or obtuse (to their understanding). Part of it was the logic of “I bill clients at $800/hr, I am not spending my time to resolve whatever this hiccup is”, but part of it was absolutely also some bullshit power dynamics.
Worked in IT for over a decade, lawyers are the fucking. worst.
I see your lawyers and I raise you doctors…
I was working with a doc on an IT problem a few months ago… It was a mildy terrifying experience, I would never want someone so ignorant as my doctor.
I don’t know, I don’t think I want the best IT person in the world performing an appendectomy.
Just because you’re an expert in one field doesn’t mean you’re an expert in every field.
I don’t think I want the best IT person in the world performing an appendectomy.
“Okay so let’s start with the simplest thing by performing a power cycle and seeing if that fixes it…CLEAR!”
I was married to a lawyer for years. They have to bill somewhere from 1700-2200 hours a year to stay on partner track. And they can’t bill every hour that they’re working (although they can double up sometimes by using the minimum 2/10ths of an hour). My sympathy is with the lawyer. It’s not a power dynamic, it’s how the firm makes money and what you’re there to do.
Yeah, because being a raging asshole to your coworkers is justified as long as it helps you “stay on partner track.”
Abusive people always find justifications for it.
“Look guys, their industry makes their boss abusive to them which makes them abusive to their staff, so it’s just how it is because money…”
This is like "Well my drunk granddad had anger issues after the war so he beat my dad who beat me something fierce and I turned out fine " of the professional world.
Some people think enough money or status is worth disrespecting other human beings who are just trying to do their already shitty enough job, and that’s concerning.
I.T has to hit their “ticket targets” to stay on the “lights come on when they flip the switch at home” track, it’s how they make their money and what they’re paid to do.
Playing coddling psychologist for grown adults who could pass a bar exam but can’t handle basic respect doesn’t make things any easier lol.
To any of those types reading this:
Stressed or not, it’s amazing how fast things move when you work with IT as teammates instead of underlings, using your level brain instead of your emotionally unstable mouth.
Because their continued employment depends on them hitting their targets so they need support staff to do their jobs.
Yup, there’s the justification right on time. They had to abandon basic civility and professionalism to “hit their targets.”
Thats why they can be abusive, ignore the company process for tickets, threaten their coworkers, whatever they want. They need to “stay on parnet track” and “hit their targets.” No one else has any stressors or requirements at their workplace, just the lawyers.
Nevermind that the “support staff” make sure lots of people, processes and services work, and may individually be more important to “hitting targets” for the company as a whole than any individual lawyer.
How about the lawyers “do their job” by interacting with their coworkers professionally? By submitting tickets correctly and in a timely manner?
Abusing your coworkers is never justified.
edit: nix this.
they never justified anything.
they explained.
explained why they were raging assholes or whatever.
but didn’t justify.
But being rude and abusive to support staff doesn’t help, encourage, or even compel the support staff do their jobs any better or faster. In fact, I’d wager it’s rather the opposite.
I work in IT (not IT support, though) and I’m fortunate enough that none of my business partners are outright abusive. Even so, I still have some that I deprioritize compared to others because working with them is a pain (things like asking for project proposals to solve X problem and never having money to fund them). If someone was actively rude to me when I had fucked up, much less when I was doing a great job, I can guarantee I wouldn’t work any better or faster when it was for them.
His problem is he went to answers.microsoft.com That place is a cesspool of fuck you, but here’s a copy paste of something from 2006 so I can get some karma
He could alternatively go to…
Stackoverflow or Superuser, where the answer will be “use the search bar you imbecile, locked.”
Quora, where every question is blatant rage bait like “my 14 year old son got a B in his test. I took away his PS5 and chained him in the basement as punishment but his grades aren’t improving. How can I make him better at math?”
Yahoo Answers which is dead, and was basically Quora before Quora was a thing.
Or Reddit, where you can’t even post on 95% of subs without hitting a minimum karma threshold and where some basement dwelling mod will likely ban you for breaking hidden rule #263, then modmail mute you for 28 days without reply if you try to appeal.
I think any Q&A site is absolute dog water now.
They could come to lemmy!
…where people will definitely give helpful answers and not just dunk on them for not using Linux before diving into an extended argument about distros, sudo and run0
Man, I kind of feel for the poster.
A while back I was tinkering with some website and installed some npm packages.
Then I tried to delete the nodes modules folder… NOTHING worked… Safe mode, permissions change, command line deletion,… I spend like an hour googling and raging, it’s my fucking computer I put the fucking file there, let me delete it!!!
I was ready to give up and finally stumbled on the answer on stack overflow. The npm folder that was created (I forget exactly what it was) had the ~ symbol in path name and that basically made the folder invincible.
Luckily the poster also posted the command line to nuke the fucker and I was finally able to delete it.
So yea, I kinda get it. Seeing that stupid you don’t have permission to delete this file pop-up is rage inducing.
In defense of Andrew, until windows 10 never had I ever installed a program that made it’s own files untouchable unless you did some real fuckery with permissions.
As soon as they introduced that little warning screen in program files it was clear shit was going downhill for power users.
that made it’s own files untouchable
that made its* own files untouchable
I make that same mistake enough that at this point I figure I’m just contributing to the paradigm shift of modern english grammar.
Making the oxford comma mandatory is my next big target.
As far as I remember the secret is to log in as admin and change the ownership of the files to yourself, then change permissions and then do whatever the f you want with the files.
The long reply on how to change file ownership when it could just be
chown -R andrew /picturesdeleted by creator
In which case you could also go right-click -> properties -> security -> advanced -> click change where it lists the owner.
It’s not as quick but hey, mouse-driven UI exists.
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Andrew complains, Microsoft makes a root mode so Andrew can have his way. Andrew breaks his computer the next second by deleting a system file and proceeds to call Microsoft support. :)
Most of the annoying stuff that Linux users hate about Windows are because Windows has to cater to even the least technologically knowledgeable users.
It is why Windows updates are forced, why so many files are locked behind SYSTEM user and can’t easily be circumvented, why some settings are registry or Group Policy only, why some settings are opt out, …
Without those, their support center would blow up.
So if Linux wants to become mainstream, it will have to cater to those users as well. And Linux will slowly turn into Windows.
Most of the annoying stuff that Linux users hate about Windows are because Windows has to cater to even the least technologically knowledgeable users.
Isn’t that the whole idea of GNOME? Always considering users as stupid and lowering the bar?
“I shouldn’t have to use permissions or sudo, just all root all the time”
“Real Men Run As Root”
I don’t run as root because I’ve always been told I shouldn’t. I don’t know enough about anything to be contradicting stuff like this. It has always seemed weird to me that we don’t run as root and then just sudo everything, though.
What is the reason we don’t run as root?
What is the reason we don’t run as root?
We are human and make mistakes. Not running as root means the computer will ask us to confirm when we are about to do something major (like a software update, or formatting a partition). This reduces the chance of making big mistakes. (But I don’t see why VLC shouldn’t be able to run as root, if the user so desires.)
Did I do something odd when I set up my windows 11 machine?
If Microsoft has something marked as admin access, it just presents me with a dialogue asking if I want to do whatever as admin
I mean it’s not like I have open hardware so there’s a whole lot of my machine I really have no practical access to, but everything this guy wants is there
Him saying he’s the owner suggests a private machine, so no corporate lockout from system components. Do computer shops set up admin accounts and lock their customers out as low-privileged users?
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Eh? On Linux you also aren’t supposed to log in as root, and you also have to individually set file permissions.
This issue is unrelated to windows, it’s a safety feature that all modern desktop OSes have
It’s quite common to login as admin on windows though (in home setups), you’ll still have to authenticate for administrative tasks (the UAC popups).
The issue here is mostly that the user has probably upgraded and windows changed their account, resulting in the files being owned by their old account.
In linux, that’s fixable with ‘sudo chmod -R’
In Windows, there’s no built-in way, you need the take ownership script.
Yes, but on Linux, if I am root, I am God. I do whatever the fuck I want with my machine, for good, evil or stupidity. That’s the poster’s point. It seems like Windows doesn’t allow you to do this, or at least not easily. So I guess people who want to have absolute control over their computer shouldn’t be using Windows, I guess.
I think windows is a pretty good middle ground. Yes it’s annoying that you might need to install a 3rd party tool to give you a right click menu option to take ownership of any file/folder, but at least you can do that and it’s easy. And for normies that don’t have Linux-fu they’ll get into a lot less trouble than if you give them Linux.
MacOS on the other hand, if there’s something Apple decided users are too dumb to be allowed to do (which it turns out, is a lot of stuff), then you just can’t do it, period.
Pebkac. Gui equivalent of chown perfectly working on windows and supports recursing into directories. If the questioner doesn’t know how to login as an admin they miss some absolute basic computer usage knowledge, and a general help forum thread wont help them.
Strong Disagree, the GUI equivalent of chown is a bizarrely long series of clicks that less knowledgeable users will easily get confused doing.
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Is this real? Are people having to request permission changes on files by petitioning microsoft to change their permissions?
I’m a sysadmin and I work with Windows a lot.
The short version is that only the users granted permission to a given set of files can access those files. With NTFS permissions it’s… Complicated. You can have explicit permission to a file, or implied permission via a group that you’re a part of, or some combination of those things. You can also have read, but no write. You can have append but not create, you can have delete, but not list. It’s a lot of very granular, very crazy permissions.
There’s also deny permissions which overrule everything.
What has likely happened is that the posters user account doesn’t have implied or explicit permission to the file, but if you sign in as an administrator, even if the administrator doesn’t have permission to read/write/append/delete the file, the administrator has permission to take ownership of a file, and as owner, change the permissions of a file. Being owner doesn’t mean you can open/read/write/append/delete anything, you can just change permissions and give yourself (or anyone else) permissions to the file.
Changing ownership is a right which, as far as I’m aware, cannot be revoked from admin level users. They can always change ownership. Owners of files cannot be denied the right to change the permissions of a file as far as I know. This will always result in some method by which administrative level accounts can recover access to files and folders.
In my experience, exceptions exist but are extremely rare (usually to do with kernel level stuff, and/or lockouts by security/AV software).
The poster might legally and physically own the device and all the data contained therein, and may have an administrative level account on that device, but the fact is, their NTFS permissions are not set to allow them access to the data. The post they’re replying to is trying to let them know how to fix it by using an administrative level account and they’re not tech-savvy enough to follow along.
I don’t blame them. File permissions issues are challenging even for me, and I fully understand the problem.
Huh, having separate append permission is interesting. i didn’t realize that was an option.
Yep, there’s actually quite a few more than what I mentioned, if you get into the advanced dialogs.
IMO, it’s unnecessarily complicated, but given that NTFS is used for network file sharing in large companies, I get why it’s so crazy. They probably demand those kinds of granular permissions.
I know Linux is a lot simpler. Just read/write/execute, and a single group, single owner, and a setting for “everyone else” kind of thing, which is generally sufficient for 90% of use cases.
I think what happened here is that something went wrong and messed up the permissions of some of the users files. MS help suggested that he login as an administrator and reatore the intended permissions.
I don’t work with Windows boxes, but see a similar situation come up often enough on Linux boxes. Typically, the cause is that the user elevated to root (e.g. the administrator account) and did something that probably should have been done from their normal account. Now, root owns some user files and things are a big mess until you go back to root and restore the permissions.
It use to be that this type of thing was not an issue on single user machines, because the one user had full privileges. The industry has since settled on a model of a single user nachine where the user typically has limited privileges, but can elevate when needed. This protects against a lot of ways a user can accidentally destroy their system.
Having said that, my understanding of Windows is that in a typical single user setup, you can elevate a single program to admin privileges by right clicking and selecting “run as administrator”, so the advice to login as an administrator may not have been nessasary.
So this guy is just bitching because he sudo installed something?
It’s not MS having to manage your folder permissions remotely?
I feel like he has a machine that someone set up for him, and he can’t escalate permissions, because he’s on a basic user account.
The normal way this works on a single user machine is:
- You try to do something that is restricted to admin
- Windows puts up a modal dialogue box asking if you want to do it as admin
- You click yes
- You do it as admin
But in that case he can’t have locked himself out of a file, he can only be locked out of things Microsoft think you shouldn’t muck with unless you know what you’re doing
I want to say “Haha, Idiot trusting Microsoft”.
But honestly I want the same stuff he wants. Including modems in mobile phones. Including EVERYTHING I own.
There’s an OS you might like. It has no UAC, no file permissions, no sudo nor chmod, as it has no multi-user support, no antivirus and no firewall, no protection rings, not even spectre/meltdown mitigations, and most of all - no guard-rails whatsoever: You can patch the kernel directly at runtime and it won’t even give you a warn. And yet, it is perfectly safe to run. It’s called TempleOS and it achieves such a flawless security by having no networking support whatsoever and barely any support for removable media. If you want a piece a software - you just code it in, manually. You don’t have to check the code for backdoors if it’s entirely written by you… only for CIA at your actual back door…
Huh, didn’t realise Windows is on a level to be compared to TempleOS. And losing. Thanks for that.
What does ‘modems in mobile phones’ mean? Isn’t the whole thing a modem strapped onto a screen? What am I missing?
A lot of phone modems ship with their own SoC (processor) running its own OS. It’s much smaller and slower than the main phone SoC but, depending on its implementation, it can have full access to all of your main processor’s memory through DMA.
Andrew is ignorant. He could learn the basics of computer literacy, which would answer all his questions, but I’ll take a shot in the dark and say that Andrew doesn’t want to do that and is perfectly happy being ignorant. And also angry.
