Access denied to folder

Support
1

Hey everyone,

I have a problem, after reinstalling Synchting, I cannont sync any folders as it is written that the Access is denied. I do not think it is a problem of user, as there is only one user on my computer, and I have executed the installation as administrator,

Does someone have a solution to this problem ?

Thanks a lot,

Oscar

The following message is written :

2024-11-26 13:12:18: Failed to create folder root directory: CreateFile \?\C:\Users\Lenovo\Music\Bibliothèque: Access is denied.

2024-11-26 13:12:18: Error on folder r4mhq-uymna: CreateFile \?\C:\Users\Lenovo\Music\Bibliothèque: Access is denied.

2

It looks a lot like a permissions issue to me.

I suggest you follow the steps in (Starting Syncthing Automatically — Syncthing documentation) to have Syncthing started automatically as a user with permissions to the directory; there are security implications of running Syncthing as Administrator, and it isn’t necessary to do it that way.

3

Have you used the windows installer? In that case, installing as Administrator (for all users) may be the worse solution, as it uses a dedicated service account which you then need to grant access to the desires files.

See GitHub - Bill-Stewart/SyncthingWindowsSetup: Syncthing Windows Setup for the distinction and GitHub - Bill-Stewart/SyncthingWindowsSetup: Syncthing Windows Setup for how to change it later.

4

Thanks a lot for your answers ! I followed the links proposed and I fear I do not have the technical understanding on how to really solve the problem. Would you have an easy step by step approach to implement ?

5

Sorry I don’t use the installer myself, so cannot give you exact details. But I think the steps would be roughly:

  1. Uninstall Syncthing.
  2. Move the configuration files from the old location to the one specific to your user account: Move the whole C:\ProgramData\Syncthing folder to C:\Users\YOURUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Syncthing
  3. For the new location, make sure your user actually has access to the files: Right-click the folder, select Properties, then Security. Post a screenshot of that if you’re unsure.
  4. Install again using the same installer, but this time choose the “non administrative (current user)” option.
  5. Start Syncthing, it should find the folders it had before and keep synchronizing with the same devices.

Feel free to ask if you encounter any problems along the way. Sorry if this seems hard and complicated for an average user. The distinction between the two installation modes is really something for experts and should be made easier for the most common use-case.

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6

Just a quick tip, as the AppData folder is hidden by default, so in case you don’t see it, copy and paste %LOCALAPPDATA% into the Explorer’s address bar and press Enter.

This is being discussed/worked on in https://github.com/Bill-Stewart/SyncthingWindowsSetup/issues/51. In general, unless the user knows exactly what they are doing and why, they should just stick to the user installation mode.

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