Vista File Attribute "N"

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   I'm new to Vista and have just come across a new undocumented file attribute "N".  ATTRIB documents the new "I" attribute but nothing about "N". Nothing on MSDN and google? Any ideas

Thanks Paul Tait

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paultait Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 13 July 2005 Online Status: Offline Posts: 35	Quote Reply Topic: Vista File Attribute "N" Posted: 20 April 2007 at 3:24am
	I'm new to Vista and have just come across a new undocumented file attribute "N". ATTRIB documents the new "I" attribute but nothing about "N". Nothing on MSDN and google? Any ideas Thanks Paul Tait

paultait Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 13 July 2005 Online Status: Offline Posts: 35	Quote Reply Posted: 24 April 2007 at 8:08am
	just a bit more info. I was trying to merge over the network with some files with the "N" attibute and even though the security and sharte permissions wee correct I couldn't read the files err=5 access denied. also the the person who owned these files couldn't change the attribute. The solution was to copy, delte the original and rename to original. So this attribute also has security "conotations" hmmmm vveerryy interesting Paul Tait

molotov Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Visit Members Homepage Add to Buddy List Moderator Group Joined: 04 October 2006 Online Status: Offline Posts: 17287	Quote Reply Posted: 24 April 2007 at 8:22am
	Saw your discussion @ "attrib AN"; '"N" attribute. What does it signify?' seems to indicate that the N is for "Not Content Indexed". Do you find this to be inaccurate? How did an error present itself to you, and what was the exact message? Did you use FileMon / Process Monitor to determine what precisely the failure was? Edited by molotov - 26 April 2007 at 7:28am
	Daily affirmation: net helpmsg 4006

paultait Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 13 July 2005 Online Status: Offline Posts: 35	Quote Reply Posted: 26 April 2007 at 6:59am
	I first noticed the attributes when I tried to merge some c++ source files across the the network. We looked at the files in the directory using file explorer with "attrib" column switched. ATTRIB at the dos prompt also showed the N attribute. Naturally I typed attrib /? but it only documents the I or indexed attribute. The only way we've found so far to removed the N attribute is to copy the files and then delete the originals. using fopen()/fclose we have been able to create files with the N attribute. All these files are in %LOCALAPPDATA% so I dont think its a vista file protection problem. I still dont see why a "not indexed" file should be protected ie error 5 access denied. I am wondering if it means not indexed YET if it is maybe the file indexing system exclusively locks the file till it has scanned it. Otherwise I'm stumped. It sure is exciting though finding a seemingly undocumented feature after using Vista for only 2 days

molotov Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Visit Members Homepage Add to Buddy List Moderator Group Joined: 04 October 2006 Online Status: Offline Posts: 17287	Quote Reply Posted: 26 April 2007 at 7:31am
	So if I go into Vista, do a "Start > Search", and type "attributes:an" into the top right search box, what do I need to do to get the "error 5 access denied" error you are seeing?
	Daily affirmation: net helpmsg 4006

paultait Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 13 July 2005 Online Status: Offline Posts: 35	Quote Reply Posted: 26 April 2007 at 9:32pm
	First I've tried the search attributes:an and it didn't work. But once you've found an N file just try changing perms or adding another user to the perms Paul

molotov Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Visit Members Homepage Add to Buddy List Moderator Group Joined: 04 October 2006 Online Status: Offline Posts: 17287	Quote Reply Posted: 27 April 2007 at 8:49am
	Unfortunately, out of 55156 files on my system none have an 'N' attribute.
	Daily affirmation: net helpmsg 4006

paultait Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 13 July 2005 Online Status: Offline Posts: 35	Quote Reply Posted: 29 April 2007 at 7:07pm
	Maybe you only get it with Vista Business ???? I'm going to write a small C program to dump the file attributes and ses which flag the N attribute sets. I'll let you know the result Paul Tait

paultait Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 13 July 2005 Online Status: Offline Posts: 35	Quote Reply Posted: 29 April 2007 at 9:37pm
	Just found this googling in groups for FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NOT_CONTENT_INDEXED So it looks like my theory that the indexing service has the file locked may be right I guess for testing purposes you were copying large amount of files/directories to your temp directory. When files/directories are copied FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NOT_CONTENT_INDEXED attributes is set on them and then removed by the indexing service??(hope someone can explain the internals of this behavior). But it takes sometime till the attribute is removed from all the files/dirs

paultait Members Profile Send Private Message Find Members Posts Add to Buddy List Newbie Joined: 13 July 2005 Online Status: Offline Posts: 35	Quote Reply Posted: 29 April 2007 at 10:12pm
	This article explains that the indexing service which runs at SYSTEM level locks un-indexed files for 1-5 minutes and gives err=5 access denied http://support.microsoft.com/kb/329065