Hi everyone, Maybe some of you stumbled on tha same problem I have. I lost complete admin rights and can no longer read my C:\ drive. This happened for no particular reason but seems to be linked with me playing around with the HOMEGROUP funcitonnality. I was trying to find a way to enable one of my Windows 7 workstatiojn with my windows 7 server. Simple enough, I was trying to access \\server\c$ . I kepted on getting access denied, even after supplying the right password. So I looked into the homegroup, tried to see what open would allow me to access my c$, but nothing worked. Out of desperation, I enabled sharing of my C:\ drive using the name C. Then I disabled homegroup... Mind you, all this was not done exactly in the same sequence but all that to say, all of a sudden, COMPLETE ACCESS to my C:\ was lost, until I realised I could no take it back since I was displayed as an administrator but could not do any admin tasks.. I tried takeown /f c:, tried that in safe mode, tried to use the computer management/disc management.. NOTHING.. I can't run anything since I don't have the privileges.. Is there a fix for this? How many of you got this problem?

I've had a similar problem: lost access to all of my D: drive which only contained data - mainly digital photos etc. It's a partition on the other hard-drive in my PC. It also occurred just after I played with homegroup. I was getting access denied all over the drive, but not for everything. In particular I had one folder of photos where I could access some but not others for no rhyme or reason. Displaying thumbnails, most had the default landscape (and were inacessible) and a few had real pictures and these were accessible. The other partition onthis hard drive was myXP system, but after this problem occurred I could no longer boot from it - "NTLDR not found". I assume it had been corrupted as it was still on the disk as far as I could see.As all this data had been carefully backed up I gave up trying to correct this. I deleted the drive, reformatted it and put all the data back. Needless to say there were no hardware errors reported.But I'm concerned what caused this.

This is even more troubling that HOMEGROUP seems to be the new way to share data between computers. And it seemed to have happened when I was changing things on the remote PC who was part of the group (I think so, its hard to say as I was trying to find a way to access the admin drive on my server which I never could, I was force to do a share on the entire drive). I consider this to be a major issue! I am suprised that Windows 7 has been moved to RC especially with something that appears to not have been tested well enough and that is potentially damaging. RFSmith, did you try to reset the admin rights on your drive by installing it in another PC where you still had admin control before you destroyed the partition? So here is what I recommend : 1) Make sure you backup every important files before you temper with HOMEGROUP because it seems to really cause serious damage and I am not able to give you a pattern on how to reproduce this since its the first time that this happens. 2) HOMEGROUP should be made easier and more clear on how to set it up. If this is what is causing me not to be able to access my admin drivesd (\\server\c$, \\server\d$, etc), I was never able to set it up in order to gain access to that drive. I was asked my network password when trying to connect and the access was refused no matter what I did (and yes the accounts were the same on both machines). 3) HOMEGROUP needs to be carefully looked at by Microsoft's dev team because this is definitly not well implemented and prone to serious problems, especially since it tempers with use accounts security like it did with mine. This problem is not worth of a RC build. If any of you had the same problem, please write about it and let us know if you found a solution and maybe a pattern that reproduces this problem. Thanks ..

There is probably a way around this problem from what I have seen but would involve using VBootkit 2.0 to "hack" into a system. But there are no binaries available that I could see. I dont see any other way but to scrap my entire system unless I can active the administrator account somehow... This is really a big screw up on Microsoft's part that will get alot of people angry. And the problem is, only a few people played around with the HOMEGROUP functionality since I didn't get alot of replies..

I tried everything I could think of. When logged in as my normal user, which has admin rights, I could list the disk and some of the directories. When I logged on as Administrator it wouldn't even do that - I was told the disk was inaccessible. I tried changing ownership assignment but nothing would work. I was worried that I had lost my data so perhaps my approach was not as structured as it could have been. My XP system was a partition on the same disk and that went too: actual messages was "NTLDR is missing" on the XP booteven though I had booted into XP earlier in the day. As a couple of directories had pictures I was able to view and others that I was not, I assumed there had been a major corruption. Hence I gave up and rebuilt the disk. I'm steering clear of homegroups for now as I don't know what caused this.

Thanks for your input RFSmith.. From what I can see not even the Administrator account could save you so, enabling it as a precaution might be futile. I ended up having to reformat my drive as well after linking the SATA cable to another machine to salvage my important files. Fortunatly for me, I am using syncbackSE to backup my important data on redundant drives. Homegroup breaks many things that I took for granted. Even the options that would allow me to connect to my remote PC by using a similar account on both machines wont even work when enabled. On top of that, it breaks user account permissions.. This is a major issue .

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprogeneral/thread/55e914fc-7ff2-440a-9d14-13ccceeb756cHad the same problem. Found this post aftwerwards, think i solved it.Patrick

That issue talks about the MMC.. What exactly is the MMC?

MMC is the management console of windows. mmc.exe.

Thanks, didn't know about that one. Still, it would be a suprise to be that I still had access to that having lost entire admin control. This would mean that anyone could get access to this program and do what ever they want. Clearly if someone was allowed to access this its because they didn't lose total control over their system. But maybe this particular program was isolated and still recognized the fact that my user was part of the administrators group... I'm skeptical but I'll be sure to give it a try next time I get this problem.. In the mean time, I strongly recommend you play around with HOMEGROUP, do some leave (from the starting point of the homegroup, and remotely), join/rejoin, change password, leave , etc. There is a bug with this feature.

I made a step by step in my other post.

Hi,I have had the same problem to two PC's . I'm thinking its when you try to leave the Homegroup that the problem of losing admin rights happen. Both PC's had to be rebuilt. Staying away from Homegroup at this stage , I can achieve what I want to by just using the Network function. Regards