Unable to perform a security operation on an object that has no associated security.

[numbaw1fela]

I am working with VMWare 16.2.2 build-19200509

I have a few VMs that crash from time to time, so I mount the .vmdk file as a network drive and dig around in the guts and pull out whatever I may need. Then I restore this into another VM (often a backup of the dead one). I have done this pretty reliably for a while now. I run 10-12 VMs with various configurations using a 1TB Laptop drive in a fan cooled enclosure via a USB3 connection - sometimes something comes loose - that makes the VM grumpy and he dies if that happens a few times. On this particular VM, the WinXP OS starts but shows me a desktop with no icons. Not really useable, but not toast either. that is the state of the Windows XP Virtual Machine I am trying to get into. 

Anyway. the issue I am having is that when I am trying to get into this Windows XP VM, and I can get into it up to a point. So it seems alright at first - mapped correctly, not too corrupted.  When I map the Virtual drive as V:, then I can navigate to V:\Documents and Settings and get into most of the users just fine. For example I can get to

V:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Desktop

and look around - nothing there, but it shows some accessibility. The underlying issue does not seem to be memory corruption, as that would make it impossible to get anywhere.

But if I select the folder for the Administrators User, I get an error as shown in screenshot 1. It has my Host computer on the bottom, with the file I mapped as drive V. On top it has the path I am navigating to in the mapped Drive V: - and you can see the error when I try to get into V:\Documents and Settings\Administrator. 

I Click the 'Continue' Button showed on Screenshot 1.  Then the second screenshot shows what happens when I try to click through the error. I have big red numbers to show the sequence. Click on 1, That brings up the Security tab, Click on 2, and that gets me to the Advanced Security Settings for Administrator. There I click on either of the number 3's and I get to the same point - the box with #4 on it. In fact, anything I click on in that box Advanced Security Settings for Administrator under all the tabs all ends up with that same error shown as #4. 

So I need a way to tell that mapped drive that I am cool to hang out with. I tried using a command prompt and icacls but that command will not work on mapped drives apparently. 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated - thanks!!

[bluefirestorm]

The screenshot 1 shows blue colour font for the VM files; so it looks like it is Compressed. That is the likely cause of the problem.

Try using normal, uncompressed files for the VMDK files I think the problem will go away.

[numbaw1fela]

Neeto - I had no idea that was a thing. I will move it to a spot that is not compressed and I will give it a try - Thanks!!

[numbaw1fela]

I found a new drive. I removed the compression on the drive overall, and pasted the VM data to the drive. Since the overall drive was not compressed, the data pasted without compression. Then I tried the process again with the same result. The exact same behavior. When decompressing the drive, I did not check the box to apply the decompression to all subfolders of the drive... but as you can see in the screenshot, the folders are not compressed. They were pasted in and so the previous compression did not apply to them.

I am removing compression from everything on the drive (I got room on there) and will try again. Never hurts to be thorough, but it doesn't seem like this is the fix....

The application of icacls does not work still...

I tried to get into the file a different way, and was still unable to get the permissions I sought - but maybe the new screenshot will reveal something useful.

Thanks a million for the reply.