need help w/ W2k and NTFS

[ElfHeart]

i recently was having some hard drive problems which forced me to basicly backup everything i have on my computer and reformat then reinstall windows (Windows 2k). other then the time it took to do everything i managed to save and backup almost everything ... with one minor problem, when i backed up my C:\ drive with xcopy it also made a copy of the drives "System Volume Information" folder which is a locked/hidden/system folder that is used by NTFS if i am not mistaken. while copying everything back to my HardDrives after the reinstall i did not notice i had that folder and it was copied back to (was copying to a temporary HDD path so i could remove what i wanted to save and delete the rest). but now it became locked on that harddrive. so i have
'X:\System Volume Information'
which should be the one in use by the OS for that drive and
'X:\C\base\System Volume Information'
which is the left over from the old C:\, now i am unable to delete the x:\c folder because the System Volume Info folder is in use (locked by windows it seems) is there a way to get windows to unlock the path so i can delete it? i thought of formating the drive but it is 32GB and i dont have enough free space system wide to backup that data just to format the drive short of burning it all to CD

fyi x:\ was the path i picked to be the 'temporary' storage of backed up C:\ data

 

[bsobel]

Sounds like you copied permissions also, by default only SYSTEM has access to that folder. Just take ownership and you should be able to delete it.
Bill

 

[ElfHeart]

how do i take over ownership of the folder?

 

[Wolf00]

Right click on the folder, click properties, click on the security tab, click on the advanced button at the bottom, click the owner tab. In the box in the middle, click on your user name and check the checkbox at the bottom to replace the owner on subfolders. When you click OK, the ownership will change. After you take ownership of the folder, you can then replace the NTFS permissions on the folder to allow your user account full control over the folder so you can delete it. Also, I've heard that you have to have Simple File Sharing disabled for these options to be available. I don't know about that because I always have it disabled, but to disable it, bring up Windows Explorer, click on Tools, Folder Options, click on the View Tab and uncheck the Use Simple File Sharing checkbox at the bottom.

Hope this helps.

 

[Canterwood]

Wolf00, he's using Win2k, only XP has simple file sharing.

 

[ElfHeart]

Wolf, the first one you mentioned worked just fine, folder deleted now, thanks for the tip on taking ownership 🙂