After around 3 incredibly frustrating months of grappling with this drag-drop problem I encountered with my primary work laptop, it’s finally fixed!

Symptom:
Drag-Drop a file from one place to another, and I’d lose access to that file. I wouldn’t be able to open, preview, or even delete it.

Copy-Paste of the original file would work.

My Story:
The first time I experienced a problem, it was deleting a file. I got a Cannot Access error … or something like the file was in use by another application. Very annoying.

Eventually, I found UNLOCKER 1.8.9 BY CEDRICK ‘NITCH’ COLLOMB.  This worked for most of my needs.  It always said that there were no lock handles found, and offered to Move, Delete, or Rename the file.  And, for the most part, that was all I needed.

Then, over the weekend, I downloaded two SD cards full of photos onto my desktop.  I named the folders SD1 and SD2.  After that, I organized them into events, further splitting the folders, and drag-dropping the photos into their corresponding event folders.  I should have started to wonder what was wrong when I couldn’t double click on a jpg and get a preview image…. or, when I put the view settings on the Explorer window to thumbnail and it wouldn’t show a miniturized image.   But, oh well, I continued until all the 250 images were properly categorized.

The next step was to process/edit the images.  I couldn’t access any photo at all.  I tried deleting, and that wouldn’t work.

Eventually, after some experimentation, it was the drag-drop that seemed to cause the problem.

I scoured the google search results, finding one unlocker after another.  Here are some of the applications I tried:

• Unlocker 1.8.9 – this is great for simple tasks.  It’s a small app that comes up in the right-click context menu.
• File & Folder Unlocker – I never did figure out how this one worked.  I’m sure it does something, but it definitely didn’t help me in any way.
• Who Lock Me? – This was an interesting and useful app that pops up a window showing the process handle on the file.  Then, it asks you if you want to close the handle or kill it.  The problem I had with this was that I couldn’t get it to work after a couple of times.  No matter what I did, it stopped giving me the pop up window.
• UnLockIt – by EMCO Software.  This is a GREAT APPLICATION.  It has an intuitive interface.  Select the folder or file you want checked, then click the Check button, and vioala!  It gives you the application / process that’s locked the file.

The funny thing is UnLockIt worked to answer definitively (for me, that is) that my problem was not with the file being locked.  It actually said that my problem file was not locked!  The good thing about that is it allowed me to very quickly trim down all my research to one forum post that proposed a check on security permissions. (<<– Click there for the solution!)

A quick Summary of Steps:

• Basically, you check this by booting up as Administrator with XP in Safe Mode.  (You don’t need to be in Safe Mode if you are using XP Professional).
• Once you do that, click on your problem file/folder and select Properties.
• Now that you are in Safe Mode, there will be a Security tab.  Go and click on that.
• There you will find who has access and what type of access that user/group has over that particular item.

I actually had to re-assign access at the highest level, my C: Drive!

I still haven’t figured out what or how my permissions were changed. That’s for another investigation, if and when I will ever find the time.

I hope this helps those of you with similar problems.