Help! Horrible experience with permissions

Hello

Thanks ahead for any sort of help!

I seem to suddenly have lost capability to do various things with my PC (I am admin, Vista still correctly displays that I am admin). For instance I can no longer send/receive emails from my Outlook 2003. It says "you don't have appropriate permissions to perform this operation". From time to time it complains that extend.dat has disappeared whereas this is not true, it is still to be found under "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook". I have ensured ownership and full control under my username of C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook as well as C:\Users\Gregoire\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook. I have also copied my Outlook.pst file to OutlookWhiteKnight.pst and redirected my inbox and mail delivery to this but

TO NO AVAIL.

Of course if I turn User Access Control off it works fine again but that's a bit overstretched and surely there is a way to go back to the previous state without killing UAC.

Other things that have happened is I lost my ability to scan, ability to copy certain files from my wife's account to our archive and other sweets like this.

Ah and one last element of detail is that my wife does not have the problem and she is a standard user.

What I *suspect* the initial cause might be is that I have installed a security sweeper from my remote-access website from my employer and it probably messed up with the dtcom config but that's where my knowledge stops. I checked the config the INTERACTIVE user was there (don't ask me what that is, I found that following some threads on google and various websites). I have of course a proper helpdesk from work but they claim it's not their fault and that it can't possibly be because I am the first to report such a problem amongst many users and that as per policy they won't help me with my personal laptop etc etc. Anyway that suspicion itself as to the cause won't help me much.

I am really lost and about to reinstall office, though I hate to do it this way.

If anyone has any idea, much appreciated.

Thanks

You may be able to go back with system restore to the point that you installed the software.

This works with 7 and Vista
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/700-system-restore.html

I am reluctant to tell you how to manually change the security, since the software will probably reset it again.

Hi richc46

Many thanks for your suggestion. I have looked at this before. Trouble is that System restore is pretty limited on Vista and also I have never set any restore points before and seems that neither did the system for me.

So back to square 1.

I have however created a restore point now so if you feel like giving away a little bit of these manual changes to the security that might come in useful :-)

I do not intend to re-install the sweeper from my office ever. It's not needed it can operate remotely and installing it locally was just an option which I chose out of thinking I'd be the nice compliant employee :-)

Best regards


Merrisson

Have two tutorials how to set ownership and permissions. I think that was changed. Here is one
Sharing and Permissions - Windows 7 Forums

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/67717-take-ownership-file.html

both are for vista and 7

Many thanks. I appreciate your help and the fantastic response time.

While I will go through these tutorials very thoroughly I must mention that I sort of know how to do this already. However, where I am not sure is which files/folders I should apply this on, concerning the send/receive in outlook 2003.

It seemed pretty clear from various places on the web that two folders were involved: I have reclaimed and ensured ownership and full control under my username of C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook as well as C:\Users\Gregoire\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook.

So if you have any sort of further suggestion while I read these tutorials, they would be most welcome as I suspect they might speed things up.

Best regards

K u post with questions Ill post with ideas,, take care for now

Hi richc46

Not sure I understand the "K u" I am not an English speaking native but yes thanks again for your help. Anyway I am done reading and I confirm I knew these already. So the question is again which files and folders I would have to change permissions on to get my outlook up and running again.

Best regards


Merrisson

So sorry I forget that this is world wide

K is short of ok (alright)
u is short for you.


Its not english, just short hand which I should not do on here.

I will have to look at the post again, I will let you know when I come up with it.

Set a restore point

then
Read this,

How do I restore security settings to the default settings?

Good Luck my friend. I want to see a smile when you come back.

Hi Richard

I went through these steps as well and I had to use the Microsoft Fix utility since the manual steps do not apparently apply to Windows Vista Home Premium. The Microsoft Fix did not work for me sadly.

So I am back to square 1.

I have however run "sfc /SCANNOW" on the CMD (as administrator) several times and it says that Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. To blame are conime.exe and windows sidebar though I have no clue what they do and if indeed that is 1- a problem and 2- related.

See the log here:

2010-06-16 21:04:12, Info CSI 000001b9 [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:46{23}]"\??\C:\Windows\System32"\[l:20{10}]"conime.exe"; source file in store is also corrupted
2010-06-16 21:04:12, Info CSI 000001bf [SR] Could not reproject corrupted file [ml:520{260},l:72{36}]"\??\C:\Program Files\Windows Sidebar"\[l:24{12}]"settings.ini"; source file in store is also corrupted

Some places on the web say that conime.exe has a *probability* to be a virus sometimes. See conime.exe Windows process - What is it?

Dunno, I am lost. I might decide to re-install outlook, after all takes only 5mins nowadays.

First check for the virus
Scan with your anti virus and
download and run malwarebytes.
Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware: Malwarebytes

If negative, I would back up everything and reinstall. That is probably the best way

Hi Richc46

Both my anti-virus and Malewarebytes' say that I am clean: No malicious items detected

I am ok to reinstall outlook 2003 but still, before I do that if anyone out there knows which files/registries are used by send/receive command then I am a taker!

Also I vaguely got the impression from various websites that if my dcomcnfg had been messed up by the install of my employer's sweeper then I could also look in there. Anyone knows what should show in there? Right now it's got the following account with local Access set to Allow: SELF, SYSTEM, INTERACTIVE, Administrators and my username as well. So it looks ok but who knows. I know very little about that myself.

Anyway thanks to richc46, that's been a very useful exchange. I will try a re-install in about two to three days. I will ask developpers at work what they know about the permissions needed for a send/receive. We'll see.

Merrisson

Hi

Quick update and potential workaround:
- I browsed more forums, posted more requests for help. It turns out many other people have encountered the same issues around between 2004 and 2007 (empirical time estimate based on my own searches). But NO consistent solution whatsoever was ever posted (at least in the long google stream I have surfed). I believe this "Don't have appropriate permission etc" problem may have different possible causes based on what I could see.
- I picked up a couple of hints that I tried, like making sure Outlook is an allowed program on the windows firewall (it wasn't on mine but making it so did not resolve the pb).
- I browsed all the outlook keys in the registry, none really seemed to bear connection to the send/receive permissioning but I am not an expert and it's clear I have missed the right one.
- I tried renaming the "extend.dat" file in the outlook folder in my "C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook" to "extend.old" but outlook did not complain and did not notice (i.e. it did not re-create the "extend.dat" which it shold if it finds it's missing) so my fairest guess is as follows: that sweeper that I installed somehow bogged up my registry and had outlook believe I was not me, i.e. it made outlook point to another username on my pc (hence the permissioning pb). Sadly I am not skilled enough in registry stuff and all that sort of things to be able to solve that.
- I have tried all the other things mentionned on the previous posts of that same thread. So people with potentially the same problem should read them first.

- Anyway my best work-around was not to re-install outlook, for two good reasons: outlook was running ok on my wife's account on the same pc and more importantly I did not just have an outlook problem: other things, permission-related, were happening on my account (see my very first post on that same thread). So it felt more like a user-account pb than an Office pb. Hence, rather than re-installing outlook, I unhid the true admin account, created a new account for myself (standard or admin, doesn't matter, I did admin here) and deleted the old account (and then hid the admin again). The problem has not repeated itself for the new account, and not ever since. So far so good.

I somehow resented doing this in the first place as it felt like failure and taking leave before the ennemy (and also sounded like a big and tedious thing to do). But hey, I had to admit defeat and give out the arms (and it turned out very easy, I guess Vista isn't that bad after all...)

So there you have it. Thanks for your help richc46 mate. I will hold you in my prayers.

Merrisson

You are so very kind Merrisson, TY.