Why Are All My Folders Marked Read-Only?

It’s a quirk of the Windows operating systems that by default most folders are set to “read-only,” but normally this should apply only to the folder itself and not to any files contained in the folder.

Some users have experienced problems similar to your own however, where suddenly they can’t open or save changes to files in any “read-only” folder. This issue typically occurs after upgrading to a new version of Windows, installing certain updates, or in some cases after a spyware program changes your computer’s settings.

There are two main ways to get around this issue that don’t involve the drastic options of deleting all your affected files or completely re-installing Windows. First, you can force Windows to permanently remove the “read-only” attribute from specific folders by using the command prompt.

To access the prompt, open the Start menu and type “cmd” in the search box. Click the “cmd” option (in some versions of Windows it will instead read “Command Prompt.”)

Next you’ll need to type in a command to forcibly remove the “read-only” attribute from the specified folder. For example, if you wanted to remove the “read-only” tag from your “Documents” folder, you would type “attrib -r +s C:\Users\YourUserName\Downloads” (without the quotes and changing “YourUserName” to the name of your Windows user account).

Tap Enter after typing the command to remove the “read-only” flag from the folder and you should now be able to makes changes to any files in that folder.

If using the command prompt to remove the “read-only” tag doesn’t fix your problem, there is still another option available. You can use a registry modification tool to “take control” of the folder and give you full administrative access, which should allow you to modify any files in that folder.

First you’ll need to the download the take ownership registry fix available at the Windows Seven forum (or download it directly by clicking here). Extract the zip archive and then open the new folder. Click and drag the “Add_Take_Ownership” file to your desktop, then right-click the file and select “Merge.”

Right-click the folder that’s giving you problems and select “Take Ownership.”

You should now be able to freely remove the “read-only” tag and modify any files in the folder.