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"don't have permission to see its contents"

Greetings,

I'm really having problems with this Snow Leopard, and don't want to be agitated, or frustrated, but it's getting harder and harder to do so.

After installing on my 17" Macbook Pro, I was able to log in, fine, but was unable to do much of anything, as I was prompted to give a administrator password, but had no idea of what this was.

After trying every combination of my name (which has been my user name from before time), and pass work, I got it in my head that "this messing ain't cutting it."

After a bit of looking here on the forum, I was able to find out how to use my install disc to crate a "system administrator" account, and then, after restarting from my hard drive, I was able to go into the system preferences, find my users, and give myself permissions to act as an administrator (after this, I read several posts about how it's scary to crate an administrator account -- and it was -- but just tried to be strong -- channeling bit of strength from an alligator I once saw eat a big chunk of old truck tire, and just pressed on).

Now I should note that while I was log in as the (scary) administrator, I did seem that I was able to open folders without issue, however, when I logged back in as me (the monkey of wire), nothing much had changed, I could not open any folders with exception of "public" and something else like that...

The warning I get is ""don't have premission to see its contents" -- wow, I can't even look?

Frightening.

And, what scares me even more, is that I can go back in my time machine and see things that I would like to bring forward, but when I try to, I'm told "this is part of OS X and can't be modified... " or something close to that... Don't worry about this issue right now, I think it might be tied to the "no permission" deal, but if I've lost those back ups... Well, we all know what that feeling is like, and I will be feeding parts of my grays anatomy to said "Alligator."

So, while I'm here, what about just going back to OSX plain old Leopard?

Can I do this if I do a reset to factory install?

Will that boot out all the snow?

And if so, what I fear is that I have already corrupted my time machine drive with a back up done while this Snow Leopard OS installed... Yeah, when I plugged in the drive to check what it's staturse was, the Macbook just jumped in and performed a new back up -- of this state of affaires.... Scary again.

I was thinking I might be able to go into the drive and erase this one (or perhaps two) backups, but then when I looked there is a document that's very new -- like just at the time this back up was being done -- and it's called something catalog, I think, and I have a gut wrenching feeling that to erase that would be the beginning of a horror show... So, let me not go there just yet...

Wow, that's a lot... Any help on this would just be awesome.

I honestly just rock out hard no my apple products, I'm a long time user, and always do things carefully and with thought, but this is very underwater frozen under the snow black water gator **** for me right this moment in time.

Thank you,
WM

MacBook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.6), machine is 2.5 years old

Posted on Aug 30, 2009 7:51 PM

Reply
113 replies

Apr 27, 2013 9:53 AM in response to Wiremonkey

None of these solutions helped me, so if they didn't work for you I have found another method that does work, but it is a bit of a hassle -


If you drag the certain folder(s) that have the restricted permissions to your desktop/any other area of your computer that's not your external hard drive, it will copy the contents onto your computer. It takes a while, but after this is done, when you access the copied file on your mac the contents are accessible and the folder is finally unlocked.


FINALLY I have my old iTunes media back that my mac wouldn't allow me to get off my external hard-drive! Saved me a lot of dolla as I was going to have to re-purchase all my old films etc.


Hope this helps somebody else!

Mar 22, 2014 7:48 PM in response to instageek

Right .So this repairing permissions debate is still stuck in 2 camps


First camp you can ONLY repair permissions using the disk utility that has been installed with the OSX that means you go to Applications and open up Disk Utility and repair from there.


because that is the most updated and if you installed any applications other than what is on the Install Disk then those permissions are changed and sometimes incorrect ,why I do not know , but you can see the log repairing and ...SHOULD BE drwxr - xr - x THEY ARE rwxr - xr - x and so on and it says completed ,but they will never be completed because they change again.


Second camp You MUST use the Install Disks to repair permissions that means insert the bundled install disks boot up in options and then open DU and repair from there or go to Recovery Disk,however the permissions will be the one that were installed at first when you installed the OSX and then the updates will change them again run around and around.


I tried both but each time it took almost up to ten tries because someone said that even thought it states


permissions repair complete


They areNOT REPAIRED because after 10 times round finaly they disappear and if you have a complete blank history


Repairing permissions for “,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

permissions repair complete


with a disk repair in between so I do not beleive there is a solution because it does not allow you to do a loop repair that means it will not run repair until they are repaired continually you have to do it each time and it takes all day.


Then a couple of hours after it will go back to the same condition. it is a complete waste of time.


It is a caused by secularism that the different applications are fighting for the bigger share of resources and you can not have 2 using the same one so you are going to get conflicts and permissions are the conflicts.


The nature of human code writers.

May 25, 2014 2:03 PM in response to Marilyn_Sand

Marilyn Sand~


I'm still not quite what happened but it's a good thing I'm not a neurosurgeon. I managed, in one fell swoop to screw up permissions lock myself out of all my external drives! It's a holy act of compassion that the internal drive was spared.


First I tried all the usual stuff - get info, safe boot, log in as my separate user account (in case of emergencies); what a nightmare.


After pushing gazillions of electrons over the net search for a soluton [what??? my install disk? Nope. I forced Snow Leopard onto a late 2011 MacBook Pro - the first machines that Apple made to not boot from Snow]. I was more than 2 hours in by this time...


I was desperate. Looked like I was going to be co-joining my MacBook 13" with the main Book when I stumbled across Flowmotion's post thanking you and with a description of your solution.


Awesome! All good and back to abnornal in less than a few quick minutes. Unbeleivable. Wow.


A thousand good wishes for your every happiness. You made my day.


MacBook Pro 17", late 2011, Intel i7quad core, way too much ram, 10.6.8; and my trusty little MacBook, Intel i5 dual core, wants more ram

"don't have permission to see its contents"

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