This afternoon I felt the urge to organise the contents of my secondary hard drive, it’s in a real state and has needed treatment for a long time coming…

All was well until Windows Vista wouldn’t allow me to move some directories stating in it’s own unique and special way:

Destination Folder Access Denied – You need permission to perform this action

Upgrading from a live Windows XP Professional install to Windows Vista Ultimate caused my file permission problems, as file security is treated very, very differently between the two systems.

To squash this file permission issue you need to re-assign permissions of the effected files to your user account. To do this:

1. Right-click the file (or files) and select Properties
2. Properties will have opened in a new window
3. Click on the Security tab
4. Click Advanced in the lower right
5. In the Advanced Security Settings window that pops up, click on the Owner tab
6. Click Edit
7. Click Other users or groups
8. Click Advanced
9. Click Find Now
10. Double-click your user account (eg. Michael)
11. Click OK to all of the remaining windows except the first Properties window
12. Select your user account from the list up top and click Edit
13. Select your user account from the list up top again and then in the pane below, check Full control under Allow
14. You’ll get a security warning, click Yes
15. Click OK to save your updated permissions
16. Click OK to close the Properties window