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MoveSecurityAttributes for Server 2016 with Windows 10 users

Anonymous
2019-12-16T18:56:01+00:00

I've seen some discussion regarding the registry key "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer" MoveSecurityAttributes. 

My site ran into this issue recently after a comprehensive review of the File server and how it was being used. It appears that once a user moved a file or folder within the same volume then the MoveSecurityAttributes setting was necessary to affect the  behavior. This situation is discussed here:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/310316/how-permissions-are-handled-when-you-copy-and-move-files-and-folders 

though this article appears out of date, as at the time I am writing this. 

Anyway, if you want your users to drag and drop or otherwise move files within a volume and have the files take on the security profile of the destination  folder then this key is necessary. Our site runs Windows Server 2016 with users working on Windows 10 workstations. I added the registry key onto the file server (it is not there by default), and tried things out. At first, it did not work. So the article quoted above has some flaws. The way to get this working relies on additional pieces of information. If you want  the object to inherit the permissions from the parent folder:

  1. Perform these steps from the Windows 2016 File Server. Do not do this on the user workstation.
  2. Add the key "MoveSecurityAttributes" to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer" This sub-key is a DWORD type.
  3. The value should be "0" if you want the moved object to inherit the permissions from the parent destination folder.
  4. Reboot your file server.
  5. Test.

This information is as-is (in other words, this worked for us) so if someone uses it and verifies then that would be great.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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