They managed to make it even more confusing
How do I remove the lock icon from the Windows 7 folder?
Windows XP had a few ways to share a folder and it was always a little confusing working with NTFS permissions and Share permissions. Now in Windows 7 it's even more confusing! Yes, that's because they now have Homegroups and you can share files with a homegroup, which is separate from sharing with the rest of the world.
Anyway, if you shared a folder and then decided to delete it one day, you might have noticed a strange lock icon on the folder you previously shared. It looks something like this:
I found this really annoying because I had never had this problem before in Windows XP and I didn't even know what the lock icon meant. I just want to delete the share, not lock the folder. After some reading I found out that when you share a folder in Windows 7, the folder no longer inherits permissions from the parent folder and that's why the lock icon appears. I find this very confusing and something I certainly wouldn't have thought of myself!
