Today I was helping a user that couldn’t read or write to files in a folder on the network. I figured something was set on the files that had them set to Read Only. So I ran the following DOS command on the folder containing the files:

attrib *.*  -r +a -s -h /s

Some of the files were changed fine, but others threw an access denied error message. At first I thought it was permissions on the files. I discovered that we had full control permissions on the file.

I then restarted the computer in Safe Mode, thinking that the some type of software had the files locked. I still couldn’t do anything with the files in this folder. I couldn’t even move them from the folder to another.

Finally I decided something was wrong with the file system or disk. I ran CHKDSK /F from a DOS command prompt on the hard drive.

Finally, after the scan was finished I tried running the ATTRIB command again. Success! Finally I could read and write to the files again.