locked files in Vista

I'm a new member so I hope this is the right forum. A client of mine has a Hewlett-Packard laptop with Vista Home Premium. A few days ago her husband used the computer for some web checking and did something to the computer. Neither one of them can figure out what he did, but now all her files seem to be locked or read-only. She can open a file or e-mail, but cannot edit. She was able to forward an e-mail to another computer and from that computer she could use the file. It would seem that something got pressed wrong on the keyboard and that has rendered the files uneditable. I'm new to Vista since I'm much more used to Windows XP, so I was wondering if anyone out there had any ideas as to what we can try in order to restore full use of her files.

Any information would be gratefully appreciated.

Many thanks.

Hello trainun,
Welcome to the forums.

Do you get any error message when you try to edit a file?
You can right click on one of the files and select properties from the menu. If read only is checked then uncheck. If not then click on the security tab. Click on the user name and check the permissions for that file.
If this is a group of files in a folder, right click on the folder and check for read only and permissions for the folder.

Hope this helps.
Gary

August 10, 2008

Thanks for the tips. This turned out to be a head-scratcher.

Thanks for the tips. I went to my client today to see what's what. Something was really weird. She uses MS Office 2003. I tried clicking on some of the files on her desktop she mentioned were problems. When I did, the file tried to open in Office 2007 and wanted a product code, which she didn't have since she didn't order the program. When I canceled out of the code window, of course it opened the file in Office's Limited Access, which let the file open, but she couldn't work on it. If we went to either Excel or Word 2003 and opened the file from that program, all was OK!

I did some checking and found that the Office folder in Program Files had folders for both Office 11 (2003) and 12 (2007). She couldn't figure out how Office 2007 got onto her computer, nor could her husband remember. The only thing we can think of is that somehow, perhaps a trial version got loaded in. What I wound up doing was to use Vista to uninstall Office 2007 completely. Then, when we went to the files on the desktop, the first time each for a Word or Excel file, Office 2003 reinstalled itself and all was OK after that. She can now open any of the Office files on her desktop and they will open in Word or Excel 2003 and she can edit them as she did before. Unless you have any thoughts about how this could have happened, I guess it will just be one of those strange "computer mysteries." At any rate, she's going to try using the computer for the next few days and she'll let me know if all is well. I still firmly maintain that computers have minds of their own and defy us mere humans to do anything about it.

Thanks again for your suggestions. It appears that it wasn't the Administrator section as she could log on without any problem.

I thought I would share this experience just in case anyone else winds up with this crazy situation.

Hi Trainun,

Glad you got it straightened out. Only way I can think it got on there was if a trial installation was on the comp. and got clicked or clicking on a trial version on the net somewhere and installing it.

Take Care & Have Fun!!!
Gary

If it was a retail computer, it probably came with that Office 2007 trial. I've seen a few new PCs advertised with Office included lately.