Windows in Detail in Software

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Ownership When you create a new file or folder on an NTFS partition, you become the owner of that file or folder A newly created file or folder by default gives everyone full permission to access, delete, and otherwise manipulate that file or folder Owners can do anything they want to the files or folders they own, including changing the permissions to prevent anybody, even administrators, from accessing them Take Ownership permission This special permission enables anyone with the permission to seize control of a file or folder Administrator accounts have Take Ownership permission for everything Note the difference here between owning a file and accessing a file If you own a file, you can prevent anyone from accessing that file An administrator who you have blocked, however, can take that ownership away from you and then access that file Change permissions Another important permission for all NTFS files and folders is the Change permission An account with this permission can give or take away permissions for other accounts Folder permissions Let s look at a typical folder in my Windows XP system to see how this one works My E: drive is formatted as NTFS, and on it I created a folder called E:\MIKE In My Computer, it looks like Figure 1632 I set the permissions for the E:\MIKE folder by accessing the folder s properties and clicking the Security tab (see Figure 1633) File permissions File permissions are similar to Folder permissions We ll talk about File permissions right after we cover Folder permissions

In Windows 2000/XP (except Home edition), just about everything in the computer has a Security tab in its properties, and every Security tab contains two main areas The top area shows the list of accounts that have permissions for that resource The lower area shows exactly what permissions have been assigned to the selected account Here are the standard permissions for a folder:

List Folder Contents Enables you to see the contents of the folder and any subfolders (This permission seems the same as the Read & Execute permission, but it is inherited only by folders)

Enables you to read any file in the folder Enables you to write to files and create new files and folders

If you look at the bottom of the Security tab in Windows 2000, you ll see a little check box that says Allow inheritable permissions from parent to propagate to this object In other words, any files or subfolders created in this folder get the same permissions for the same users/groups that the folder has Unchecking this option enables you to stop a user from getting a specific permission via inheritance Windows XP has the same feature, except it s accessed through the Advanced button in the Security tab and worded differently Windows also provides explicit Deny functions for each option (Figure 1634) Deny overrules inheritance

Don t worry about memorizing special permissions; just appreciate that they exist and that the permissions you see in the Security tab cover the vast majority of your needs File permissions are quite similar to folder permissions Take a look at the Security tab on a typical file (Figure 1635)

Full Control Enables you to do anything you want Modify Enables you to do anything except take ownership or change permissions on the file Read & Execute Read Write If the file is a program, you can run it If the file is data, you can read it Enables you to write to the file

Take some time to think about these permissions Why would Microsoft create them Think of situations where you might want to give a group Modify permission Also, you can assign more than one permission In many situations, you ll need to give a user both the Read and Write permissions