TechGremlinDuring my testing of Windows 7 I have had almost no issues to report, the only things that have been of notice have been third party or driver related. Then there’s the permissions bug, this bug is so elusive that hardly anybody has reported it and nobody has a solution, not even me.
Update 1: It appears that as of build 7068 this bug may have been fixed, see comments below for details.
Update 2: There are reports the bug has reappeared in the RTM build, it can also occur in Windows Vista but slightly less often.
Update, September 2 2009: It has been mentioned below that this website has a possible fix and that it can fix both Windows Vista and Windows 7. I don’t get this bug any more on any of my machines so I am unable to verify it however.
The issue is fairly simple, occasionally after running a file from the Desktop or a subfolder thereof I am fairly certain the file does not have to be run first though, it just happens more often if it is, (usually a setup program, but can be something as simple as a small test application) upon attempting to delete the file you get:
1. The UAC dialog wishing to confirm the deletion pops up, you click Ok (if UAC is off or disabled then go to straight to step 2)
2. An error message pops up exclaiming that you must get permission from the owner, or that you must be an administrator, it will give you the option to try again or skip.
3. Clicking try again pops up the same message, over and over and over again.
4. The IT admin in you gets confused “But I am the administrator, my user is a member of the Administrators group”
5. There must be some mistake, you attempt to grant yourself ownership of the file by right clicking and….
6. Right clicking results in a wait of more than 30 seconds during which an attempt to do anything else in the explorer window will cause Windows to assume that it has at least temporarily stopped responding, also it will then cause the menu to disappear as soon as it comes back.
7. Once you have worked this out, you click Preferences and go to the security tab where you normally change ownership, upon viewing the ownership screen you stumble upon the message Current owner: Unable to display current owner, not uncommon when the file is created on another computer etc. On attempting to change owner to yourself you get the message ‘Access Denied’.
8. You go for more advanced deletion methods, unlocker, unlock, using the command line for every windows based ownership, takedown command you can find, nothing will make the file move.
9. You may give up, don’t worry the file will magically delete itself after about 30 minutes or so, also if you restart the file will also disappear.
This is very frustrating when you are doing things that require the deletion of exe files often.
The file doesn’t work with any kind of logic, once it’s locked it will be unable to be deleted until Windows (I’m assuming it’s Windows, or whatever causes the problem in the first place) decides to delete it.
It seems that the action of attempting to delete the file in the first place is what gives it these permission-excluding superpowers, before the attempted deletion the file will act correctly, opening and closing when you want, renaming and copying as you please, obviously with no indication of what it will do if you try to delete it.
This happens on the desktop, I really haven’t experienced it anywhere else, it may also occur in the user folder but I haven’t checked.
Running as the administrator, either by opening explorer as an administrator or by enabling the administrator account and then logging in with it will give sufficient permissions to delete this file.
This is unlike any permissions issue i have ever come across on any operating system, every file is deletable, even if you have to go as the root or admin account, this file however disobeys every possible windows based and 3rd party command thrown at it.
There are no disk errors, at least none found by chkdisk, restarting and running /r on my main drive is a little counter productive since as soon as I reboot the file will be gone so there will be no file issue to be found, for the record though, I have, no issues.
This is not the same as the issues people have in Vista and Windows 7 where folders can’t be deleted sometimes, as they can be deleted simply by taking ownership of them, or even by deleting the files in the folder individually.
I have submitted a bug report.
Software I have installed and have been run:
MS Visual Studio
RealVNC
iTunes
Quicktime
Firefox
Battlefield 2
Adobe Digital Editions
TextPad
7-Zip
Foxit Reader
Avira Premium Security Suite
VideoLAN
TortoiseSVN
Windows Live, :Just the messenger
CCleaner
Most importantly, I have formatted and reinstalled Windows 7 as previously I had upgraded from Vista and there seemed to be a possible link between upgrading and getting permission issues but now I’m not so sure.
If anybody has any information on this issue please comment below, does it happen to you? Do you have a remedy that works for you? Does it happen when you have performed a full install or an upgrade from either Vista or a previous build (!important!)? Do you have any of the same software installed as me? I’m taking particular interest in CCleaner and Avira here.
Im running build 7000 of the Windows 7, and have the same problem. And I run CCleaner =O. In face I think it started when I used ccleaner for the first time.
Well that’s a good coincidence, I didn’t mention it in the post but it didn’t occur the second time until after running CCleaner, I can’t replicate the problem in Vista so I will assume there’s some sort of incompatibility between the two.
I still don’t know if there’s a solution once the problem starts other than reinstalling windows or formatting.
I’m running build 7022. I continue to experience access denied errors when trying to delete files. I’m unable to isolate where the problems occurs(common file location) but it does appear to be executable files only. I did find a work around (safe mode) so now I just wait until I have a number of them and I’ll reboot. Submitted BRs. It’s eerily similar to the problems with Vista’s folder security. One step up and two steps back.
I’m experiencing exactly the same problem. After using Linux primarily for a long time I gave a try to Windows 7 (x64). It seems to be faster than Vista but this bug(?) really bugs me :@ I hate rebooting the computer (a reason for using Linux) and I need now :@ Updating an application is impossible since it cannot replace executables with newer ones.
It happens everywhere. I mean Desktop, Documents, Downloads, ProgramFiles/…, ProgramFiles(x86)/…, my external harddisks….. everywhere …..
The thing is not about upgrading from vista because I installed 7 two times and never upgraded from vista.
Here are installed programs on my computer in common with yours:
MS Visual Studio
Firefox
Avira Premium Security Suite
Windows Live, :Just the messenger
CCleaner
It is not related to Visual Studio and Avira because I had the same problem before installing them. I can’t say anything about Firefox, WLM and CCleaner because when I install windows the very first thing I do is installing those three.
I’ll check here from now on. We may find something 🙂
PS: CSS doesn’t validate (3 errors) 😉
CCleaner is definitely a good suspect here then, it certainly does nothing of the sort to Vista, but somehow it seems to be doing something that Windows 7 doesn’t like, it would be good to find out what, it may be a specific option in the program that we’re all choosing. BTW I’ll have a check on CSS.
Edit: It was the polls plug in, I wasn’t using it anyway.
The same problem has been happening to me…
It is extremely annoying… It especially sucks because I’m a programmer and it prevents me from using Dev C++ due to the fact that every time I compile it has to remake the exe file… the one that has no-user-permission-super-godlike-admin-killing-wont-ever-go-away power… /cry /wrists /bleeds_out_and_dies
Programs on my computer:
Firefox
Steam
Dev C++
Borland C++ Builder 6
CCleaner
Well the only thing we all seem to have is CCleaner and Firefox and I wouldn’t imagine Firefox causing any system wide issues like that.
To future commentators, If you have CCleaner it would help if you post in a list what general CCleaner removal settings you use, I’m assuming it’s one specific setting that is causing this problem, not simply having it installed or running it.
Windows
Applications
And all the Registry Integrity issues.
I also used wipe free space and secure file deletion.
If I have time I’ll install Win7 to another partition and won’t install CCleaner to see if this problem occurs then.
Ups! See the source for tabbed list 🙂
I tabbed using HTML so it can be displayed more easily, you seem to be using most of the same settings as me, I know for sure I don’t use any in the Firefox list, didn’t do the registry cleaner once and didn’t try wipe free space at any time either.
I have the same problem here and I haven’t upgraded from Vista. I confirm also that this problem occurs with all file types and everywhere on my HDD. I’m running Win 7 build 7000.
Programs on my computer:
VS 2008 SP 1
Firefox, skype, pidgin, chrome
Avira Personal Edition
Photoshop CS4
Codegear RAD Studio 2009
CCleaner
office 2007
quicktimes, iTunes
netbeans + jdk
I upgraded to build 7068 yesterday. The problem seems to be solved. ..but we will see..
Let us know how it goes, I will also upgrade my laptop to 7068 to see if it’s fixed.
Please do let us know if this is fixed in 7068… although, we all probably will have to wait until RC to get the fix.
This bug is pretty frustrating… but I do want to point out that I don’t have CCleaner and I also have the problem on build 7000.
I posted my info here:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itprogeneral/thread/4301c7d1-88ba-4c94-88c2-e5f1850f062f/
With screenshots of my problem here:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhdmpbwp_8cs22zhgq
I’m on build 7000 x64 and have been using it since the past 2-3 weeks.
This problem started happening today afternoon.
I cannot delete any exe file anywhere on my system. A system restore at first did fix the issue for a few minutes but it resurfaced in 10-15 minutes and system restore fails to be of any help.
I hope 7068 fixes this issue, will upgrade soon.
Is it really possible to upgrade or do I have to completly reinstall?
But more important for me is to know, wheter the bug is gone with 7068. Someone know?
Yay! I have no problem with 7068 🙂
@m0h1t: Do you have CCleaner as we all have?
@mullo: Yes it is possible if your computer is plugged in and has ~11GB free space. Also you have to start setup IN windows for upgrade not at boot time.
After upgrading some software may seem more unstable but later they get used to new shiny 7068 😀 (Chromium crashed everytime I tried, but later worked well)
And you may have license problems for some software like Avira Premium Security Suite. Just register/activate one more time 🙂
Yup I have CCleaner aswell.
7068 appears to fix this problem for me on my laptop, I’ll do some more testing over the next couple of days.
@Jayson Go: I have a feeling this can be caused by something other than CCleaner as well, whatever it is, CCleaner appears to set it off straight away each time.
@Ben: Yeah, my exe’s get affected when I execute them. I imagine, CCleaner is somehow doing some file access on the executable.
At any rate, here’s another question… it seems that people running build 7068 are claiming the problem is gone. This seems like the type of problem that Microsoft, let alone us peons (no offense intended), would consider critical… my question is, where’s the communication from Microsoft? I understand that 7068 is an internal/private build… but someone has either directly or inadvertently fixed this bug… i just want to hear that this has been addressed, “officially”. I love win7, but I could never use it for development (which i do now) if the problem persists.