Using mklink /h results in "Access is denied."

Question

From command prompt with Administrator privilages:

c:\>mklink /h c:\dirA c:\Users\Piotr\dirB
Access is denied.

I'm on Vista x64. Using /j or /d instead of /h works. What's the problem?

Not sure if this is what you're after, but I tried mklink w/o any flags to try to link a directory and it didn't give me what I wanted. I tried using the \D flag and that seemed to work (not sure if that's different than \d or the default, which some ms docs said was 'symbolic'). — jinglesthula, Jul 02 '14 at 16:12

David d C e Freitas · Accepted Answer · 2011-04-12T07:16:15.470

55

Hard links can only be used for files, not directories.

References: MSDN: Hard Links and Junctions, <1>, and <2>

edited Apr 12 '11 at 07:16

answered Apr 11 '11 at 10:30

David d C e Freitas

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"*Access is denied.*"... Not the most helpful error message here. – P-Gn Jun 11 '18 at 16:44
@P-Gn Just the usual Windows error message... – inf3rno Oct 11 '21 at 11:07

score 16 · Answer 2 · edited Mar 08 '19 at 17:52

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You can use the /j switch to create a directory soft link. Be careful with the del command. To remove link to directory use the rmdir command, as del will delete all files in the directory the link points to.

edited Mar 08 '19 at 17:52

DavidPostill

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answered Aug 25 '12 at 07:12

labiol

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 08 '11 at 18:59

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I had the same issue: check that the file or folder that you are trying to create doesn't already exist (c:\dirA).

answered Apr 08 '11 at 18:59

David d C e Freitas

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Folder `c:\dirA` does not exist. – Piotr Dobrogost Apr 08 '11 at 21:15
OK, in this case, it's probably because it's being created on the root of c:\, see if creating it in another directory helps? – David d C e Freitas Apr 09 '11 at 07:19
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I see nothing special about c:\ in this case. – Piotr Dobrogost Apr 09 '11 at 13:50
Permissions on the root of the drive (C:\) are slightly different to normal user folders, as it's a sort of "system" area in windows. – David d C e Freitas Mar 19 '17 at 17:58
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@DaviddCeFreitas No, it is not. There is no such thing as a hard link to a directory. There is no fix for "Access Denied" message when `/h` switch is used. The access permissions has nothing to do with this. – ﾤﾡ Mar 23 '17 at 22:39
@DaviddCeFreitas As *There is no fix for "Access Denied" message when /h switch is used.* comment is true I would suggest deleting this answer. – Piotr Dobrogost Dec 07 '20 at 09:08

Using mklink /h results in "Access is denied."

3 Answers3

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