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Asked: 2021-10-21T14:33:05+00:00 In:

Solved Can’t Delete Desktop Icons Without Admin Permission

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I’m moving my Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit platform to a new computer. On the old machine, I almost never had to log on as administrator because I could perform any system-altering operation by entering the admin psswrd at the UAC prompt. At the same time, I had total control of the environment in my user account, being able to customize my desktop and start menu at will. I can’t remember what I did originally on the old machine to set all that up, but I’m having problems on the new one. I managed to enable customizing my start menu (creating new folders, etc.) by making sure that any instance of “start menu” I could find on the computer was shared, but while I can delete icons from my desktop that I created, I am unable to delete any that have been put there by program installations without a UAC prompt. Right-clicking the Public folder and choosing “share with” produces only the “advanced sharing settings” dialogue and editing those settings seems to do nothing at all. Also, I don’t see any relevant entries in Group Policy Editor. I need read/write privileges for that folder! I’ve always appreciated the security provided by UAC, but this is not a security issue. Anybody have a solution?

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    1. Best Answer
      For anyone interested, it turns out that, in my case at least, the solution was “don’t use Windows Easy Transfer”. I had done a lot of customizing of my old platform, involving a lot of editing of permissions. WET doesn’t transfer permissions and only part of those customizations, in such a way that I think I wound up with sort of a corrupted mess. Since it doesn’t transfer permissions and you need to reinstall all your programs anyway, I don’t think there’s much point in using it. It’s not difficult to re-establish accounts manually and desktop preferences by exporting theme packs. Once I started customizing my third attempt at a fresh install, this time without WET, I had no problem at all setting up the proper permissions. Folder editing now works as it should.
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