Desktop Permissions Issues

I'll try to break this down so its easier to understand as I'm having a bit of trouble sorting through what exactly happened myself.

So here goes...

My system setup:

Pretty basic; dual core, Windows 7 installed, regularly updated, active Sandbox and Antiviurs program, clean system with no adware/viruses detected.

What happened today:

Today I was working with Windows Media Center, trying to set up both Nestopia and SNES9x emulators. I also installed Push-A-Button EmuCenter that runs within Media Center as an add-on.

The problems I'm having:

1) The first thing I noticed is that, when I right click on the Desktop and go to the "New" entry, I usually have a list of items to choose from. Now I have only the word "Folder" with the system shield next to it.

Here's a screenshot:
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/6510/newfolder2z.jpg

2) Now, whenever I try to delete or rename folders on the Desktop, it says I need permission. If I try to save something from another program to the Desktop (like an image from Photoshop for example) it tells me access id denied. This is something that's only started happening today as I never had to do this before.

Here's a screenshot:
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/4508/permission3.jpg

3) I’m also now having two issues with Sandboxie. I always run Internet Explorer sandboxed and was easily able to recover things as I download them. However now, I see that if I try to recover something directly to the Desktop, it tells me Windows needs to give Sandboxie permission first (same issue as #2 from above).

Here is a screenshot (same message as above):
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/8674/permissions.jpg

4) My second Sandboxie issue is even stranger. Lets say I “Save As” an image from the Internet Explorer to the desktop. Now let’s say that I create a “New Folder” for the Desktop from the Internet Explorer save dialogue box. It ends up creating it as a file that is not associated with Windows Explorer and can’t be opened.

Here is a screenshot:
http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/825/newfoldern.jpg


That’s everything in a nutshell. ALL NEW issues. ALL happening just today after my installs.

It seems something about either Sandboxie or the Account Permissions have gotten screwed up. Why this would happen just because I installed some add-ons to Windows Media Center is a mystery to me though.

So, where do I even begin?

 

Try uploading those addons to VirusTotal if they're less than 32MB.

 

Just to be on the safe side, I did as you asked. Here is the results:

I figured as much as I'm always very cautious with anything I downloaded and always make 100% certain it won't be a threat before I even allow it onto my system. Not to mention the fact that EmuCenter, Nestopia and SNES9X are all extremely popular programs.

I'm just not getting why it made my system go a bit haywire.

 

3+ weeks of AV definition updates might make a difference, I'd have gone for a fresh analysis

This might be useful for resetting permissions?

 

Oh, I actually didn't even realize that I could rescan it. I thought those were the results. Anyway, I went back and did a rescan and here they are:

As I said, these are extremely popular files and really next to no chance anything malicious was installed with it.

My problem is wrapping my brain on how things got screwed up. I'm sure I could just go in a check the permission, but that doesn't explain why it went haywire over a simple thing like Windows Media Center. Does this also address where my Right Click menu items went (like New Folder, New Text Document, etc)?

I just wish I knew why something so simple turned into such a cluster :***

 

I honestly can't account for what's been happening on your computer, I think I'd head over and work through the Read & Run me just to be sure nothing else is implicated in this.

 

Finished running all the scans (Spybot, SuperAntiSpyware, Malware, BitDefender Deep Scan, etc) and there were 0 items found. I'm usually very conscious about this kind of thing so I was and still am fairly confident that this is some kind of screwy Windows thing.

At this point, I suppose I'm not so concerned about the "why" but the "how to" as in fixing the issue.

Let's start with the Desktop permissions. Maybe I'll get lucky and that will be the magic bullet that will resolve all the issues I have at once (being that maybe the permissions is restricting usage to all the areas areas).

How should I go about restoring privileges back to my default setup when I first installed Windows 7?

 

Greetings, J8son...

In a strange sort of way, this almost looks like a corrupted user profile kind of thing. You might try creating a new admin account and wiping out the problem account - that might be the quickest solution, other than trying to dig in and root out the corruption...

 

I see. Could you tell me a little bit about what all I would have to re-setup once I wipe that account and create a new one?

If this is the case, is is possible that installing the add-ons to Windows Media Center corrupted the profile in the first place?

 

I think the best course would be to create a new admin account before deleting the problem account. Does the new account exhibit any of the same symptoms? If not, then we're good to go with setting up the new account and getting rid of the old.

If, however, the new profile is also screwed, then we're on the wrong track...

Who knows? Only one way to find out...

 

Well, the good news is I tested creating a new user account and it seems to have restored my context items and my desktop permissions.

The very BAD is that ALL my settings and configurations for my applications have been reset.

This is simply something I can't re-do. It took weeks and weeks of tweaking & installing to get my system setup the way I needed it to be. I can't possibly redo all that (couldn't if I wanted to as I can't remember some of the settings off the top of my head after I tweaked them).

So, please tell me there's an alternative I can work on to restore my current user profile. :cry

 

This proves that there's something badly amiss with the old profile in terms of settings and configuration.

It's safe to pull your data over from the old profile but I would strongly advise that you stick with the new one and try not to do too much customizing in Windows at any one time - take it slowly with frequent Restore points.

 

Check this article out. It may help you. You will have to copy files from your old account to the new.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/fix-a-corrupted-user-profile

 

It's been a while since I've had the chance to follow up on this issue, but today I tried and the results were not great.

The hope was based on the above link that if I just copied all the files/folders from the "Old User Name" folder to the "New User Name" folder, I wouldn't have to do a top down reconfigure of my setup.

I tried that on a new user setup and everything in still reset when it comes to my windows configuration. Many of my apps are acting a little funny now as well.

I'm desperately hoping I can somehow repair the current user profile as this would save me a huge amount of headache. I would almost be better off wiping my HDD and doing a complete reformat at this point, so saving the current profile would be simply wonderful.

Is there a way to copy some of the newly created user files from the fresh profile BACK to the old user profile I'm using right now, thus allowing me to possibly salvage it? I hope...

Thanks!

 

Any thoughts on above post?