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Windows 7 can't copy files that do exist.


bizzybody

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I'm trying to copy a bunch of files from a hard drive from an XP system to a new box with Windows 7 Home Premium. Well for unknown reasons Win 7 is claiming some of the files on the old drive don't exist at all even though it shows them and displays their size and properties etc.

But it will not open them or copy them, claims they don't exist. They were NOT compressed or password protected on XP, they're just various downloads, documents and pictures and they're just in folders directly under C:\

Looks like Microsoft has stirred Schroedinger's Cat into Windows 7. The files are there but simultaneously not there, according to Win 7.

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The drive is directly connected to the Windows 7 PC, not by a network. I tried putting the old drive back in its original PC but it's having problems booting.

I booted the old system with Microsoft DaRT 5.0 and attached to the Win XP Home install (which DaRT claims is XP Pro, DaRT 5 was ERD Commander) and was able to access everything. I copied the files to be saved to a USB external drive then reset their permissions and removed any read only attribute.

Next step is to see if Win 7 will still insist some of the files are/aren't there or if it claims I need Administrator rights to copy them.

I'm hoping Microsoft doesn't wait until Service Pack 1 to fix this.

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I booted the old system with Microsoft DaRT 5.0 and attached to the Win XP Home install (which DaRT claims is XP Pro, DaRT 5 was ERD Commander) and was able to access everything. I copied the files to be saved to a USB external drive then reset their permissions and removed any read only attribute.

That worked, but it's not something a person should have to do just to convince Win 7 that files exist. How do we grab MS by the lapels and get them to fix this issue?

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The user accounts on the ACLs from the XP system will be completely different to the Win7 ones, so only "well known SIDs" (like Administrator, Everyone, Authenticated Users, etc.) work on both (even if you name the accounts the same).

User profiles in particular have permission inheritance disabled so users don't go poking around in each others' documents, so if anything is under "Documents and Settings" or was moved from one of those folders then that can cause issues.

(Moving objects on the file system within a volume does not re-enumerate the permissions, so moving an object from a folder with inheritance turned off to somewhere with it turned on will not let the parent object's permission trickle down.)

By default Windows will honour permissions placed on files, so the fact that you managed to copy the data when booted outside of the OS would imply it was a permissions issue on the items/volume (copying to another volume forces a file creation, so the ACLs for the target volume, if applicable, are used).

Alternatively backup programs use the SeBackupPrivilege and SeRestorePrivilege to read & write to locations regardless of what permissions are set on them, or if the XP installation will no longer be used to boot then a taking ownership of the objects allows you to assign whatever permissions you want.

You might find the root of a volume marked as system is also treated as a special case, like %windir% and %programfiles%, so it is worth creating a folder to put the data in (I tend to put stuff into \TEMP if it is in transit, so I know what to clean up afterwards).

I don't think there is a bug here to fix, tbh.

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