Setting Permissions

Go to the advanced settings, and see if there are the permissions from the parent folder which are inherited there. Remove those, or block inheritance.

I did that.

Try and see the effective permissions for the last folder for different user accounts as well as everyone, and see what you get. They should not have access rights.

You state "all the other workstations can open the folder", but don't include any information on what user accounts you are logging into those workstations with.

NTFS permissions are not applied on a computer-basis, so you cannot lock a folder based on the workstation it is being accessed from. Permissions are user-specific. If you log in to the workstation using the Administrator account, you will have access. This is because the permissions are granted to that account.

Firstly, when you say 'Owner', how are you filtering based on this? Using the 'CREATOR OWNER' placeholder account in the permissions? If so, go to the Advanced button on the folder's security tab and click 'Owner' - who is the current owner displayed as?

-Matt

Hi Matt. Thanks for your reply.

If the user logs into his/her local machine as an administrator, that will allow them to access any folder on the server? I did not realize that. Most workstations here are administrator accounts.

How would you recommend securing some folders on the server from all users?

If they are domain administrators, there is nothing you can do to secure those folders, because even if you create a new administrative account to have access to the shares, a domain administrator can still take ownership and set the permissions to add himself.
If you need the users to be administrators on their local computers, you can assign them a simple domain user account, which will be in the local administrators group on each computer, and allow access to that folder only for domain admins

There is only one domain administrator. The rest are just domain users. They are administrators on their local machines but just users on the domain.

if the file server is a member server, then if the users are not local admins on that server, and just domain users, then if you set the folder permissions to grant access only to the domain admins, group, then they should not be able to access it.

>> If the user logs into his/her local machine as an administrator

There are two types of Administrator - a Domain Administrator and a Local Administrator of an individual workstation/Member Server. The users would have to be Domain Administrators for their access to the files on the domain to be unrestricted.

As a local administrator but a regular domain user they cannot change the permissions on another machine.

Have you managed to get the permissions working properly now? My policy is to set 'Everyone' with Full Control at Share level and then filter permissions at the more granular NTFS level.

-Matt

Tigermatt,

Thanks for your reply.

I haven't had a chance to go back to that project yet. Here is what I am trying to do in detail.

I am relocating every workstaion's My Documents folder to the server which is the only server in the network and functions as the domain controller. Server 2008. I only want the workstation user and the domain administrator (me) to be able to have access to the folder so that the My Documents of each workstation cannot be viewed by other people in the company.

The directory tree is:

C:\
    Volume1---Full access by all.
         Work_Station_My_Documents---full access by all.
               User1---full access to user 1 and domain admin
               User2---full access to user 2 and domain admin
               Etc...

All workstation user's have administrator rights on their individual workstations. None are domain admins and there is only 3 who have Administrator rights on the server.

I don't have a great deal of experience with server OS's so please pardon my ignorance.

The permissions structure you have described looks correct to me and should only allow User 1 and the Domain Admin access to User1's folder on the server.

I'm a little confused at how this isn't working. Can you explain where this is falling apart?

Thanks!

-Matt

Hi Matt,

If I go to another user's workstation under their log on I can see the contents of the other folders.

I will double check some things tomorrow and get back to you but that is how it was operating the last time I tried it.

Kyle

>> If I go to another user's workstation under their log on I can see the contents of the other folders.

If you log in as another user (at any machine), you should only be able to access that user's own directory. If permissions are set properly, you shouldn't have access to any other users' folders.

Look forward to hearing back from you. Some screenshots of the permissions screens might be helpful in troubleshooting this further.

-Matt