This would’ve infuriated me… if it weren’t for the fact that it happened on a Virtual Machine and I had backups and snapshots. But hobbyists be warned: Windows 11 changes folder permissions and may make your existing scripts much more dangerous to run!
I have this old script – it’s been around for years and years. Every morning at 6 AM, it resets the print spooler. To do so, I wrote a simple bat file that contains something along the lines of:
net stop spooler
C:
cd\
cd C:\windows\system32\spool\PRINTERS
del *.* /f /s /q
net start spoolerAs you can see, it changes directory to the PRINTERS spool folder… but Windows 11 has changed permission to that folder. Even when you run command prompt as Administrator:
What does a simple .bat file like that do when it encounters an error? It carries on to the next instruction. Which means it will run “del *.*” on the entire C:\ drive.
Sure, lots of files are write protected, but you’ll still do a lot of damage before you know it. So be warned, be aware, check your scripts… or at least have frequent and reliable snapshots!