administrator permissions

When managing my Vista x64 system from an administrator account, I too often get the error message,

"you need permission to perform this action".

what can this mean? If I need the "special permissions" in addition to all the others that my admin. account already has, how do I enable that? thx edo12

Right click on the program Icon and run as adminsitrator, see if that helps.

Make sure that you have permssions,.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/24232-sharing-permissions.html

Do not change permissions given to the system or problems may develop.

If you are in an adminstrator account and you do not have permission, you must use the right click method, that I gave above.

Hi edo12,

Welcome to Vista Forums!

Vista is quite different from XP. There are many folders and files that are restricted even from admiinistrators (junction points for example) - in the Windows files and even in your own profile. Also, Administrators don't have nearly as many rights and permissions in Vista as they did in XP - not just with file access but also in performing actions. Some can be corrected, some can but should not be corrected, some are intentionally complex to "correct" as restriction is considered better, and some are caused by other programs and security software which may or may not be changed given your version of Vista (without creating a serious gap in your system's security or sometimes with a registry modification).

There are some actions which must be done different ways even when logged in as an Administrator. For example, to use Command Prompt for a SFC command, you must right click on Command Prompt and click "Run as Administrator" (even if logged in as an administrator). Unless you do that, the program will not work properly as you will not have permissions. Also some other programs (especially installations) must be started or run by right clicking on them and clicking run as administrator as well.

It would help if you would list some of the other actions you are trying to do and getting this message (please provide a few or as many as you can so I can get a sense for the types of things being restricted). Then I can see if it is normal, if we can (or should) change the permissions, or if some other security measure is overriding normal administrator permissions and see if we can change that. Are you eventually able to do these things or do you currently "give up" as you can't identify how to obtain permission?

It's not necessarily a matter of enabling "special permissions" - there really isn't such a thing. Some can be resolved in a more or less global fashion and some need to be done individually - depending on what you are trying to do.

I hope this helps explain things a bit. Once you provide the many examples, we'll look at them and see if there's a common cause or if they require different approaches or if those permissions should remain restricted.

Thanks and good luck!

rich64 - I do run as admin, I do have all admin perms (except the stupid "special" Thanks anyway for the reply.

Lorien - That's a lot of info you've sent. The immediate problem: I'm trying to get msinfo to run. I get a WMI error msg. To rebuild WMI I have to rename system32\wbem\repository. When I try the rename, I get the "you need permission to perform this action" error msg.

Richard is correct, you do NOT have the same full permissions you did in XP and many need to be changed to do what you want. They aren't "special", they've just been removed when Vista was developed.

Go to the folder Wbem and right click on it and click on properties and then the Security Tab. See if your username as an administrator is included with Full Rights. If not, add your username with Full Rights and check the box to apply this to all sub-directories and files and click Apply or OK. Then click on Advanced and do the same thing in the Special Permissions section. Once done, reboot. You should now be able to rename the folder as you wanted (but be careful what you do because you now have more permissions than you really should and can do damage if you're not extremely careful and know exactly what you are doing). Here's a good article on the subject if you need more details with screenshots and everything: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/157304-folder-permissions.html.

Here's some additional information on permissions in case you run into problems;

To see your permissions, right click the folder/file, click on properties, and check out the security tab. Check to see what permissions you have by clicking on your username (or user group). Here are the types of permissions you can have: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-vista/What-are-permissions. You need to be an administrator or the owner to change permissions (and sometimes being an administrator or even an owner isn't enough - there are ways to block even them from access (though a smart administrator knows these ways and can get around them - but usually shouldn't because they were denied access usually for a very good reason). Here's how to change folder permissions in Vista: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/windows-vista/set-file-folder-permissions-vista/. To add take and grant full right permissions and ownership to the right click menu (which will make it faster to get in once it is set up), check out the following article: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/05/21/take-and-grant-full-control-permissions-and-ownership-in-windows-7-or-vista-right-click-menu/.

I hope this helps. If not, post back and we'll try to check to see if more is required to get permission (like moving up a folder or taking ownership or whatever). I'll probably want some screenshots at that point before proceeding any further - but hopefully that won't be required.

Good luck!

Anything over and above what I have told you requires caution. Be sure that you are not changing any permissions that will create system problems. Only your programs etc.

Follow my adivice, follow lorien or follow both. Dont take matters into your own hands.

Soory guys - you're not telling me anything I haven't already done. It has been useful to learn that Vista permissions are tricky. I know how to manipulate permissions & deal with ownership. Lorien says there no such thing as "special permissions" - so why is there that last line in the permissions list for System etc? My apologies for being impatient, but too many errors have been occurring when I attempt simple tasks, and I have no time for workarounds to commands that I know should work. .There's some serious problem with this installation of Vista, which I believe occurred after I ran a registry cleaner (uniblue) a while back. I'm beyond choosing restore points, and it looks like a reinstall of the OS is in order.

That may be the problem the reg cleaner. Stop the registry cleaning they cause problems.

Do a system restore
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/76905-system-restore-how.html

If it is fixed get rid of reg cleaner.


Get rid of the tune up stuff, reg cleaners (except ccleaner) and follow these instructions to have a great computer
Suggestions for Proper Maintenance - Windows 7 Forums

If you cannot do the restore as you said, and you did not back up registry, a reinstall is the way to go.