Vista: setting file permissions
I think you don't have a read-only attribute for folders under Windows, i.e. you can only set it on files. (So it's always displayed as a square instead of a tick.)
The UNIX 777 permission are generally unnecessary if you're setting up some website or programming environment under Windows and normally creates security problems if you grant Everyone all permissions.
The best practice is to understand why the 777 permission is necessary for that particular folder and grant the "Modify" or "Full Control" permission to the correct user. For example, if you want to make a folder writable by some PHP script running in IIS, just grant the IIS user (you have to find out which one since it's different with different IIS setup) Modify permission.
- Right-click the file and select Properties.
- Click on the Security tab.
- Click Advanced in the lower right.
- In the Advanced Security Settings window that pops up, click on the Owner tab.
- Click Edit.
- Click Other users or groups.
- Click Advanced in the lower left corner.
- Click Find Now.
- Scroll through the results and double-click on your current user account.
- Click OK to all of the remaining windows except the first Properties window.
- Select your user account from the list up top and click Edit.
- Select your user account from the list up top again and then in the pane below, check Full control under Allow, or as much control as you need.
- You'll get a security warning, click Yes.
On some files that are essential to Windows, you'll get a "Unable to save permission changes... access is denied" warning and there's nothing that you can do about it to the best of my knowledge.
Reconsider why you're using Windows.
That's generally how the process goes. You don't want to be doing this too often though.
From an elevated Command Prompt, type:
CACLS /g username
This will grant all permissions. I might have provided the incorrect usage but typing CACLS /? will tell you for sure.