Solved Can't delete desktop icons without admin permission

phil22 April 19, 2015 at 23:08:03

I never get any UAC prompt on any of my three computers. All you need to do is properly adjust the UAC slider. Control Panel --> User Accounts --> Change UAC Settings Pull the slider all the way down to the bottom ** Click 'OK'. Job done. ** Only do this if have you have a good third-party firewall installed (which I have, one of the strongest you can get). message edited by phil22

As I've said, I appreciate the security provided by UAC. On my old machine, the slider is set all the way to the top, and I've never minded needing to enter a password for operations that can make changes at a system level. If you're going to basically give the user administrative privileges my moving that slider all the way down, there's really not much point in setting up a user account. All I want to do is have the ability to arrange things on my desktop and delete anything I want at any time. I know that the reason I'm presently not able to do that on the new computer is not a "security" issue, but that some of the items on "my" desktop are on the desktop in the public folder, which prevents me from making changes that would affect other users (even though I am both the administrator and the only user) . I need read/write privileges for that folder from my user account and I need to know how to get those privileges. I just can't remember how I did it originally on the old computer.

I haven't exactly solved the problem but I've isolated it somewhat. For some reason, I'm unable to enable sharing or transfer ownership for some folders, even logged in as administrator. I think that in the process of setting up the computer, I've managed to get it corrupted, and to make it ever more frustrating, I backed it up after it got screwed up. I'm beginning to see more clearly how I initially set things up on the old computer so my "solution", at this point, is to re-install windows and start over. This time, I'll be more careful and thorough in using Windows Easy Transfer and I'll make frequent backups. If I come up with a true solution, I'll probably post back here for the possible benefit of others. Thanks.

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.

nice one that is good. message edited by wizzys