Windows 7 not letting me compress folders

[Scunneyworth]

Hi all
Not sure if this is the place to ask about this issue, however I've tried a few other places and no luck

Currently working for a school, and some of the students need to compress a folder for their coursework. Apparently this did used to work last year, however, it doesn't now. On Administrative accounts it works fine, but as soon as you try it on the students accounts? Nothing I've tried this on both their logon and on mine using the $ network share to the PC they're using. I've checked the permissions, they've got full access on the folder they're compressing and the TEMP folder under users/(their logon)/local/TEMP, and still no luck

Anyone able to help?

 

Thanks in advance

Sam

 

P.S If you want evidence of the folders, let me know and ill get straight back to you

[wyattzx]

Would it be possible to use something like 7zip to compress the folders? It's lightweight, free, and (if I remember correctly) open-source.

[DXMember]

what exactly are you trying to do to achieve a compressed folder?

 

if you are using an archivator then you need premission to read the folder you are trying to compress and you need write premission in whatever folder is your destination for the archive

[MeshFile]

Follow your topic, @Scunneyworth.

 

Try what others have mentioned as the program used for archiving needs some permissions for it to do its job (source and destination). Also, what error do you get and what archiving software you are using?

[Scunneyworth]

Would it be possible to use something like 7zip to compress the folders? It's lightweight, free, and (if I remember correctly) open-source.

Should have mentioned - a colleague of mine has tried 7ZIP, not worked

[Scunneyworth]

what exactly are you trying to do to achieve a compressed folder?

 

if you are using an archivator then you need premission to read the folder you are trying to compress and you need write premission in whatever folder is your destination for the archive

It's just for student coursework. They need it for some part of their coursework and it wont let them compress the folders so they cant evidence it

All permissions on the folders are correct for the students, as I've checked the 2 folders used (The folder they're compressing and the TEMP folder where it's stored whilst compression is taking place) and still no luck. To answer the bit about archivator's - we're just using the "sent to - compressed folder" right click option.

[Scunneyworth]

Follow your topic, @Scunneyworth.

 

Try what others have mentioned as the program used for archiving needs some permissions for it to do its job (source and destination). Also, what error do you get and what archiving software you are using?

7ZIP has been tried, no luck, as has WINRAR and while WINRAR worked, it cannot be used for school as we dont have the license to use it. 

The error we get is "File not found or no read permissions" but as mentioned, Read/Write permissions are fine on the folder being compressed and the temp folder.

[MeshFile]

What permission does the compression software use? Explicitly run it as the user that is allowed to read data on that directory.

 

Use other directory (user folder, etc) to do further testing.

 

Check for AV scanners too as some may mark programs as malicious limiting their permissions or blocking it.

[Scunneyworth]

What permission does the compression software use? Explicitly run it as the user that is allowed to read data on that directory.

 

Use other directory (user folder, etc) to do further testing.

 

Check for AV scanners too as some may mark programs as malicious limiting their permissions or blocking it.

As far as I know, the permissions are just read/write on the folder(s) of the account in use, with read only off.

I'll try that when I can, thanks for the suggestion

As far as im aware also, the AV scanner won't detect as it's built into the OS

[DXMember]

7ZIP has been tried, no luck, as has WINRAR and while WINRAR worked, it cannot be used for school as we dont have the license to use it. 

The error we get is "File not found or no read permissions" but as mentioned, Read/Write permissions are fine on the folder being compressed and the temp folder.

While the archivator does it's job it doesn't store everything in memory, it uses temporary Windows folders where it stores it's own temporary working file while processing, and only when it is done does it move it to the destination location

so you will have to find where is the temporary working location stored,

might be under %AppData% or %ProgramData% or even somewhere under C:\Windows\Temp

[Scunneyworth]

While the archivator does it's job it doesn't store everything in memory, it uses temporary Windows folders where it stores it's own temporary working file while processing, and only when it is done does it move it to the destination location

so you will have to find where is the temporary working location stored,

might be under %AppData% or %ProgramData% or even somewhere under C:\Windows\Temp

It's users\useraccount\appdata\local\TEMP but, as mentioned, permissions on this folder are fine

[grep.username]

If you aren't able to zip a file with the built-in compression method provided by Windows, and you aren't able to compress files while using third party applications (like 7zip), I would begin to consider that the user may not have the necessary permissions to compress the file. I would recommend the following...

1. Run 7zip as an administrator (right click > Run as administrator)

2. Compress your file/folder

If you continue to receive errors that state "file not found or no read permissions" I would consider logging on to the local system administrator account. Are these machines joined to a domain. There are several domain admins that will deploy group policies that block file compression. This is often implemented when the CPU on the machine couldn't cope with the load required to compress files/folders.

What is the OS on these machines?

Hope some of this helps.