Here's my situation:I am dual-booting XP and Windows 7. XP is installed on one partition, which also contains my documents, music, pictures, videos, etc., and Windows 7 is installed on its own partition. I've gotten to the point where I can get into these folders in their original locations, but, for example, when trying to add music to the iTunes library, I have had no success, unless I take each song individually (I have over 5500) and go to: Properties > Security > Advanced > (Continue) and check "Include inheritable permissions from this object's parent". After doing this, the song's complete info (#, Title, Contributing Artists, Album) appears in Windows Explorer in grey. However, to be blunt, there's no way in hell I'm going to do that 5500+ times.The same deal with my pictures. Unless I go through the aforementioned process, I simply get "Windows Photo Viewer can't open this picture because you don't have the correct permission to access the file location", nor will a thumbnail of said picture appear.Now, I've tried changing a few things (permissions, ownership, etc. ad nauseum) further up the line from the individual files, but nothing seems to work... what am I missing???Please help if you can. Thank you.

The CACLS command line utility will perform group changes to Permissions. Rightclick a Command Prompt icon on Start, and 'run as administrator. Type the command :CACLS /?162786 - Undocumented CACLS Group Permissions Capabilities: Rating posts helps other users Mark L. Ferguson MS-MVP

What if you place these photos in a neutral territory, say on an external usb drive? Quite honestly dual booting you are going between "we are admin" era and "we don't want to be admin" era.You should be able to go to the parent folder and push the permissions down, have you tried changing permissions on the folder that contains these items?

Susan Bradley said: What if you place these photos in a neutral territory, say on an external usb drive? Quite honestly dual booting you are going between "we are admin" era and "we don't want to be admin" era.You should be able to go to the parent folder and push the permissions down, have you tried changing permissions on the folder that contains these items?Yes, I tried changing permissions up the line from the files, anywhere from the home directory (My Documents), all the way down to the individual album folders. Nada.Thank you both for your help.Since I've no idea how to work the CACLS end of things, and my Windows 7 experience (at least in this instance) is only temporary, I've decided that whenever I'm booted into Win7, I'll simply use the backup copies I've made of all of my music, pictures, etc. on my external HDD as the basis of my operations.Again, thanks for your help, but I suppose I've solved this one.

This behavior is by design in the Windows OS. If you wish to share files between operating systems, then you should follow conventional methods. The problem you are describing is actually a highly effective security feature of the operating system. If you tinker with those files you are likely to break something else. I strongly suggest you do some research on storing files on either a network resource, or a removable drive. I simply use hot plug drives and I have to swap files and date between dozens of systems, sometimes even different technologies. You must select the lowest common security denominator when you wish to do this. In Windows XP (with private files enabled) and newer versions of Windows the account folders are considered protected space. You must store your files outside of these protected spaces. Use the public folders, or the shared documents folders. With iTunes, you should never Sync your iPod device if you wish to have access to your library from multiple computers or operating systems, if you try to circumvent this and the other security features, you will undoubtable lose sync of break some of the access rights to your media. Again a little research will save you a lot of time and trouble. I have over 1500 days of playable media and all the ID3 tags and playability is fully functionable between XP, Vista, Win7, Linux and Mac systems we have in-house. Also the Windows media and iTunes have direct access to these same files. Yes mixups sometimes occur, do not select the option to automatically update files, and learn to edit files manually from the start. If you want flexability, you have to be ready to be flexible in your actions in return.Computer software consultant for 28 years