I have this directory which I cannot remove the read only attribute from. The computer is running XP SP2 (or SP3, not sure) and the directory sits in a NTFS file system.

Looking into the web I found this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/256614 which tells that if the directory is "customized" it's treated as a system folder and thus "read only".

I don't think this is a scenario in my case, but anyway it's not helping, their recommendation is more or less:

attr -r -s /d /s d:\data

and this is not working for me. Any other ideas?

More info: The directory is served to an HTTP server (wamp) and the directory is an SVN check out. What happens is that the web server cannot write files into the directory (imagechace from drupal is you are really interested).

Edit 2:
The original post claimed that the directory sits on a VFAT FS, however I booted Fedora 11 from livecd and the partition is marked as NTFS.

Edit 3: I left the company which I worked on, on which this situation happened... so I cannot fully close this question. But things get even worse: I tested the "attr -r" answer I put, it did not work for me, and now the developer said that it worked for her. A nice WTF moment. Probably a reboot helped...

Sorry for loosing details. If anyone has the same problem, and one of the answers helps him - please comment.