After changing Share permissions, Even admin is access denied to format

I changed the share permissions on a folder in Windows Small Bus Server and
now not even administrator can access the files. They all come up with access
denied. Any ideas why this happened and a fix???

Right click the folder and properties. Maybe an advanced click to take
ownership. Then go back and add users on the security tab.

I usually give everyone full control on the share and restrict on the
security tab.

I still cannot even open files as administrator after changing owner etc...
This happened after changing permissions to restrict user to only three
people in addition to administrator. The comptroller of the company needs to
do a financial report and cannot open any of the spread sheets or doc files.
I, as administrator, cannot open any files directly on the server as well.
All come up "Access denied". All other folders that are shared are fine. This
is SBS 2003 SP2.

Have you used Deny? Deny overrides Allow. If you Deny a group that
Administrator is in then even if Administrator has explicit Allow
permissions they will be Denied because the group is Denied. Instead of Deny
you want to disable inheritance and remove all users and groups except those
you want to Allow.

Assuming the "take ownership" procedure was successful, and you may want to
double check, then:

You have a "deny" restriction set somewhere. Share permissions and NTFS
security settings are distinct, but the more restrictive one will apply.

Look first at the share permissions, as they are the most straightforward.
Set everyone full control.

Then look at the settings in NTFS - advanced and set the inheritance
settings to not inherit and the "this folder, files and subfolders" (from
memory) settings to apply to everything in the folder that is shared and
from there down.

Everything I try seems to fail... It almost seems like the folder is locked??
Make Sense??

If you are confident that the ownership and permissions on the top-level
folder are correct, go to the Security tab -> Advanced. Click the box to
apply permissions to child objects -> OK. That will apply the NTFS
permissions of the top-level folder to all the subfolders and files. (It
won't have any affect if the share permissions are wrong. If the
administrator can not access the files when logged in locally, it's NTFS
permissions, not share).

I tried to set the NTFS permissions for all folders from the top level folder
which is the "d" drive shared as DATA. As soon as I got to the folder I want
the NTFS permissions to be applied to, I get an access denied error on all
word docs and all excel spread sheets. Now what???

Probably not good practice to share the entire drive. Best to share the
folders, then apply permissions and NTFS security to the folders.

Nested folders are a PITA, and problematic. You have to turn OFF the
inherited attribute, and turn ON the "this folder, files and folders"
attribute, and apply.

If your subject folders and files are several layers deep you will drive
your self nuts trying to manage different permissions and NTFS settings.

Sounds like you need to change the owner on the top level that fails to
Administrator. Then, make sure the Administrator account has Full control
in the NTFS permissions. Apply those changes to the subfolders and files,
then re-do what you're trying to do from the root of D. The way I'm reading
this, the Administrator account is not the owner of the files/folders that
fail, or does not have Full Control (which is required to change the
permissions). Administrator does not need to be the owner if that account
has full control rights, but you probably need to change the owner in order
to give full control to Administrator.

BTW, I agree with Larry - I wouldn't share the root of the drive.

[metababble]

My apologies for posting in a thread that's over a year old, but I hope this information will be useful to some future searcher who has the same issue that I had. Also, sorry if I repeat any information already posted above, or for stating anything obvious. This worked for me, and your mileage may vary.

Background: We had an incident with writing deny permissions for the Everyone group to modify files. This was propagated to a large folder hierarchy and prevented even admins from changing the permissions back.

Solution: We claimed ownership on all the affected objects by going to the root "good" folder's Properties > Security tab > Advanced button > Owner tab > then take ownership and check the box marked "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects". After a few confirmation clicks, admins should now have control over the affected folders again.

With our abilities to change permissions restored on affected objects, admins can propagate inheritable permissions from the root "good" folder to all its children: Properties > Security tab > Advanced button > Permission tab. Confirm that the permissions and inherit settings are as desired. Check the box marked "Replace permission entries on all child objects with entries shown here that apply to child objects". Click through the confirmations. If you had separate ACLs on any of the child objects, you may wish to take a moment to reconsider this step.

worth mentioning?

If you have a complex ACL structure you still need to do similarly (or
figure out an account that does have perms). Also, in certain circumstances
you may get failures on the 1st attempt to take ownership, you can ignore
these errors and reapply the ownership change until no such errors occur.