Re: WD External hard drive trouble with read-only access

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Oops!

The Command Prompt window, elevated or not, is an emulation of MS-DOS, the operating system that many of us used for years before the first Windows arrived back in the 1950's.

That's the 1980's, of course. Windows is not THAT old! :^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
rc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100



"R. C. White" <rc@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:#lr4izNCKHA.5068@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi, drtre.

You didn't bother to quote Badger's message - and the "forum" to which you posted your messages simply relayed them to the Microsoft public news server - with NO context - so I've pasted his instructions here, with my comments inserted:

Click Start-All Programs- Accessories,

Right click CMD.EXE and select Run As Administrator,

This opens an "elevated Command Prompt", officially known as an Administrator:Command Prompt. See the Title Bar in the Command Prompt window. You must furnish Administrator credentials to open this window. Once here, any command or application you launch will run "elevated" - as Administrator.

The Command Prompt window, elevated or not, is an emulation of MS-DOS, the operating system that many of us used for years before the first Windows arrived back in the 1950's. Even though the GUI (Graphical User Interface) puts a pretty, friendly face on the operating system, under the hood, many jobs can only be done by using the more-powerful "DOS" commands. Those of us who grew up with these commands use them as second nature and don't remember that they are a new idea to some users.

Type CD\ to drop into the root directory.

CD is for Change Directory and \ is the symbol for the Root, or top-level directory for a drive; "directories" are now called "folders" but the command is still CD, not CF. In the Command Prompt window, type CD /? to see a "mini-Help" file listing all the parameters and switches that you can use with that command. This /? trick works with just about any command; read on...

Change to the external drive letter and type the following;

ATTRIB -S -H -R *.*/S and hit Enter.

Again, type attrib /? to see a list of switches and parameters with this command. Attrib is for Attribute. Each file or folder may have one or more of several attributes: System, Hidden, Read-only, etc. This command can turn those Attributes on or off. The wildcard *.* applies it to all files in that directory, and the /s extends the command to all subdirectories (subfolders). Badger's command will remove all those attributes from all the files and folders in the directory where it is used.

Good Luck,
Badger

If you have more questions, you might want to "cut out the middleman" and post directly to the Microsoft public news server, which is free and does not require you to log on. Just click here to start up your default newsreader and connect to THIS newsgroup:
news://msnews.microsoft.com/microsoft.public.windows.vista.hardware_devices

RC

"drtre" <guest@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:68eb5f4e226ee1f43133a9689c7be40f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thanks a lot! :D It works just fine now...

Could you possibly explain what exactly those commands did? I am just
curious as to what needed to be changed and how you came up with this
particular solution


--
drtre

.



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