Can’t write to external drives (Vista Home Premium)

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I am defined as a single Vista user. Vista is preventing me from writing to my external disc drives unless I specifically activate a program by right-clicking on it and selecting “Run as administrator”. This makes it impossible to run by clicking on for instance a document file, or, more importantly, by running programs from a batch file. How do I give myself the authority to run external disc changing programs normally?

Thank you, John Littell

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What program are you trying to write with?

Also is this program approved to be used on a Vista machine?

To always run the above program as administrator, right click the EXE file, and select Properties, and then the Compatibility tab, then add a check mark to the box “Run This program as an administrator”.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Dave,
I noticed this problem with a program called ZipBackup that I’m attempting to use to create backups on an external drive. I then tested the extent of the problem with plain old Windows Notepad. It is unable, unless specifically “run as administrator” from the context menu, to write anything to an external drive.

I tried to follow your instructions to set its properties, but when I selected the Compatibility tab, everything on it, including the check box you mentioned, was grayed out. At the top was said that nothing on this tab could be changed as the program is part of Windows.

Assuming this situation is sorted out, does this mean that I’ve got to go into the properties of every single program on the PC and change it??

Some additional information: Word and Excel cannot write to my external drive either. The error window says
Header: Save As
Body: You don’t have permission to save in this location.
Contact the administrator to obtain permission.

I’m not doing anything strange. I can plug the drive back into XP and write with no problem. And, I also have not problem writing to an external flash drive. Your thoughts please. This cannot be right.

John

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We need details on this external drive, Make, model, and interface.

I do NOT think that the software that you have, has been approved to run on a Vista system. Did this “ZipBackup” software come with your external drive?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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The drive in question is a Maxtor OneTouch (it doesn’t appear to have an independent model number), 120GB, partitioned evenly into drives F, G, and H which I’ve been using for about three years. When I moved them to the Vista PC, I did not install their accompanying driver (I read that they are only needed for the OneTouch backup feature which I’ve never used). Your interest in the drive particulars reminded me of the driver’s existence, so I tried to install it. The install program locks up before getting started. (A Vista thing?)

So now I don’t know if I have a Vista problem or a drive problem. Is Vista supposed to do this? (Remember, all my recent testing of the situation has been done with plain old Windows Notepad.exe . It still cannot write to the external drive when invoked normally.) If you suspect a drive querk, please recommend a simple external drive and I’ll go out and buy it. Is there any other information that I can supply?

Thanks for your time and ideas,

John Littell

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The external USB drives that I have and are using with Vista loaded as they did in XP. But I have never installed any of their software as I use “TrueImage”. If you have a different computer available, try using the drive with it.

Is this Vista machine a new machine or a older machine upgraded to Vista?

We have been using several different brands with XP and they all work with Vista by just plugging in the USB cable and wait for the local (Vista) USB driver to be installed. We have 2 Seagate’s 300 Gig’s, 1 Iomega 160 Gig’s, 1 NetDisk 160 Gig’s and a Seagate (Small footprint) 120 Gig’s.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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