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I'm trying to copy a ~5 GB file to a folder on my D:\ drive from an XP machine and getting the following error:

You don't have permission to copy files to this location over the network.

enter image description here

It then suggests I copy to the Documents folder first. Copying to the Documents folder first would be all fine and dandy if I had 5 GB to spare on C, but I don't.

The D drive contains my old Windows 7 installation, and copying to these folders requires elevated permissions. Why am I prevented from copying directly to these folders?

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  • To clarify, the source file is on the XP machine, and you're attempting to perform the copy from a Windows 8 machine, with the destination as the root of the D:\, running as admin, correct? Can you create files in your D:\ locally?
    – ernie
    Oct 30, 2012 at 15:55

6 Answers 6

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I ended up finding a very detailed explanation here. It seems, in a nutshell, the problem lies in the fact that while my user account has been authenticated with the XP machine, my administrative account has not.

Network logins are stored by individual login sessions, meaning that as a user the network credentials are stored, but any elevated processes do not have the credentials. This creates a problem when trying to copy the file over the network, because to retrieve the file I must be a user, but to put the file in the D drive I must be an administrator.

User token:

  • Can access network share
  • Can't save in admin folders

Admin token:

  • Has no stored credentials for network share
  • Can save in admin folders

Adding my plain-old-user self (mymachine\tanner) to the permissions solved the problem.

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  • 2
    If you came here from Google: Please let me know if this answer explained the problem to you! This question is getting a lot of traffic, but I can't tell if I explained it well enough.
    – rtf
    Mar 15, 2013 at 19:43
  • 1
    Just shy of a decade later, yes this explains it. I have just spent 30 minutes trying to find a workaround to the copy dialog on Windows 10 skipping merrily to 100% in seconds and silently failing to copy this folder. I cannot describe how angry I am that I had to find this explanation here, but appreciate you taking the time.
    – James
    Mar 23, 2023 at 2:32
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Open up an administrative command prompt, then map the share again in this administrative context.

net use \\destserver\share /user:destserver\username password

Retry the copy/move in explorer.

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  • This is a better solution as it does not require any change to the destination share.
    – Daniel K
    Dec 9, 2021 at 10:06
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It sounds like some new security feature. Regular users can't create files on partitions root, so maybe they've somewhat extended it to administrators too. Try create a folder and drop the file inside.

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From Wikipedia:

The administrative shares are the default network shares created by most Windows NT-based operating systems (NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/Windows 7). These default shares share every hard drive partition in the system. These shares will allow anyone who can authenticate as any member of the local Administrators group access to the root directory of every hard drive on the system

Are you authenticating on the XP machine, or are you just browsing to a visible path on the network?

For a quick fix, just reverse the direction. Go to the XP machine and pull the file from your D:\ on your Windows 8 box.

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  • I'm authenticating through the domain with admin privileges, so it looks like this has nothing to do with the privileges on the XP machine.
    – rtf
    Oct 30, 2012 at 15:52
  • Yea. Can you check your permission on that folder and see what you do have?
    – corwin01
    Oct 30, 2012 at 15:54
  • I have full control. Only thing that is different is that I'm not the owner.
    – rtf
    Oct 30, 2012 at 15:54
  • Can you take ownership?
    – corwin01
    Oct 30, 2012 at 15:55
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Method 1: Add everyone to the folder permission and check. We will try to give access to everyone and check.

  1. Right-click the file or folder, and then click Properties.
  2. Click the Security tab.
  3. Under Group or user names, click your name to see the permissions you have.
  4. To open a file, you need to have read permission. For more information on permissions, see What are permissions?

Method 2: Perform sfc scan and check.

  1. Type “cmd” on the Start screen.
  2. Right-click on it and select “Run as administrator”.
  3. Type the following command and press Enter: sfc /scannow
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Just right click on the drive and click on properties and then security, then edit, and just tick the 'write' permission check box, apply and ok. That should fix it.

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